A Gargoyle's Environment

[shadowfireflame]

I really like this poem, which I read in a copy of Asimov's Science Fiction. It's a very evocative piece personifying things we often personalize, but in terms of beauty, not of terror.

Gargoyle People
by Bruce Boston


If gargoyle people
were the world,
standards of beauty
would be far different
than they are today.
The eye of the beholder
would adore the grotesque,
worship the malformed,
rejoice in the appalling.

We would stand still
for hours at a time
without flinching,
never blinking,
glaring into one
another's countenances,
baring our static rage
and indomitable horror
with pride for all
the world to see.

When shadows of the sun
or moon moved across
the lines and planes
of our chiseled faces,
umbra and penumbra
like shifting scars,
we would celebrate the
hideous chiaroscuro
that light and its
absence invoked.

The rains would darken
our expressions further,
mottling our features
like a pox, sending
the dirt from Heaven
coursing through our
orifices in torrents,
spewing from our mouths
and staining our lips
in muddied streams.

And when the winds
teased our cracks and
crevices and whistled
and thrummed through
the stone hollows
of our wrathful selves,
the music we would
make would be fierce,
lonely, rich, and mad.