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.