"Gothic (Architectural)" by Laura Peregrin

Gothic (Architectural)

Gargoyle sat alone on his seat of stone,

Guarding the church as if it were his own.

For seven hundred and seven years he’d sat there

Unnoticed, still and silent as if he’d grown there.

Moss-greened and weather-worn, he gazed ever down.

People he saw, ever changing, never still

Buying, kissing, dancing, drinking, dying.

Heard them singing, crying, praying, lying.

Gargoyle sat alone on the church on the hill,

And but one down below ever guessed his will.

A call he made, in the secret tongue none taught him,

To the son of all the sons of the mage who’d wrought him.

“Release me,” his mind said,

“Let me leave this eroded throne,

I want to walk down below,

I want a voice!”

The mage shook his head.

“You are stone.

The ruins and rain are your life,

On this church. That you know.”

“That was not my choice!”

Gargoyle screamed, mage defended

‘Gainst a disharmonious torrent never ended

Until he relented, and in part consented

To let Gargoyle have his way.

“A man ye’ll be then for a night and a day.”

Gargoyle leapt down from his seat of stone,

Screaming and laughing he raced through the town,

Rejoicing and wondering at the feel of the ground.

Until, as dusk was falling,

A maiden he found that his heart had been calling.

He’d watched her each day from on high,

He’d felt the sun each time she’d gone by

And he’d longed for her in, or out, of her long velvet gown.

That night he listened to her, whispered to her, and soon he had kissed her

And much more besides as on her bed they lay down.

Secrets and sorrows soon overwhelmed him

Treacherous dawn rushed to overtake him.

Tears he felt and terror.

Under the last shadows he held her,

And all the stony story he told her,

And was gone. Alone.

Shock and sorrow she tried to hide,

Pacing, wailing, crying of love denied

Until she remembered words of how the night had begun,

Of the mage, and a way love might yet be won …

Long she sought him, and long she fought him,

Using cunning words and all a maiden’s wiles.

Deaf she was to his anger and denials.

Whilst above Gargoyle sat again alone on his seat of stone,

Dreaming of the girl he’d held as his own.

Her tears and cries fell on a dead heart.

No sorcery or magic would the mage consent to start.

Not though she pleaded their love, born in one night,

Her devotion and her desperate flight.

Despairing, she cried, “I’d be stone myself and beside him sit!”

The mage’s eyes held her. “So be it.”

So Girl and Gargoyle together sit, their form in stone solidified.

And as the magic had begun to bind, each the other’s hand entwined.

‘Tis said that should a lover walk beneath,

Who holds in his heart only sly deceit

Then a torrent green and slimy from above

Will find his head for his blasphemy of sacred love.