Cathedrals

 

Cathedrals were built to glorify God,

Because we don’t yet know how to glorify ourselves -

Although God, after all, is touchingly human:

Violent, insecure, making worlds in his spare time,

Occasionally torturing himself to death -

A cry for help if ever I saw one.

 

He made us in his image, didn’t he?

And we’re such fractured, ungainly things.

It’s all well and good to blame women and apples –

But who made those? The answer writes itself.

 

So God, perhaps, is the most human of us,

Which puts cathedrals in a different light,

As monuments to human frailty, and 

The lengths to which we go to dress it up.