The Janus figure described by Judith Taylor in the 35th issue of New Writing Scotland, is a powerful, rather sinister, presence. The spirited compilation of work by 48 writers of prose and poetry, entitled ‘She Said He Said I Said,’ is edited by Diana Hendry and Susie Maguire and published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies at £9.95.
RESURRECTION
We buried the double-faced god
for a thousand years
not thinking how the earth, his friend
would preserve him
to stand again
in this museum doorway
~
his stone hands
clenched at his sides
his horns casting their fearful shadow
just as they did before
his centuries of abandonment.
~
The face he turned towards us
as we covered him up
is almost gone,
scraped and scored by the deep
-ploughing and -cutting machines
that brought him back to light:
~
the bridge of the nose, one eyesocket
all that’s left. A lost look
wounded, almost querulous,
through the scars left by our implements.
~
But the face we turned away,
towards the underworld
we had learned to consider Hell,
is much as it always was: the line of the lips
the hard line of the eyebrows
and the shadows under them
~
from which he looks on us
with everything he knows
about our loyalties
and with everything he has seen
Through all the years of staring down
into the dark.
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