by Sheenagh Pugh
"Judas? You want Judasl Look,
nobody wants Judas." But the bishop's clerk
was business-like, unbudging: "We've paid
sor a full set of apostles, lad,
and we're 'avin' twelve."
Oh right, no trouble … The worst man of all time.
I stare at the harmless wood, trying to see him,
the abhorred face. How do you carve evil?
I knew l'd need more than one model
to do him from lise.
Anger: veins throbbing on the thick neck
of Master Klaus, who didn't like my work.
The glint of coin in miller Martin's face
as he gives wrong weight: old Lies, drunk
and shameless,
tugging your sleeve,
offering her blotched body ... Oh, my neighbours
were a great help, donating their coarse features
to my patchwork. I took the blemishes
of my kind, the worst in all of us,
to bring him alive.
But what happened then? He looks no sourer
than laughing Lies; as honest as my old master,
who never paid me short; as sober a man
as Martin, who has eyes sor no woman
but his plain wife.
Only a great sadness marks him out,
and that was mine. I scraped my heart
when I planed him. John, James, even Thomas,
they were names, nothing beside this Judas
noosed in my grief.
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