by Julia Griffin

“Roman statues have been found under the site of a Norman church in Stoke Mandeville,
Buckinghamshire, in what experts are calling a ‘once in a lifetime’ find. …
Two of the figures are adults—a man and a woman, both of which have had their head split
from their body—while the third is the head alone of a child.
Statues were often vandalised before being torn down, [archaeologists] explained. …
The final destination for the Roman finds has yet to be determined…”
—UK Today News

Defaced in scorn some thousand years ago,
We lie: man, wife, and child. You find us so.
Though strangers broke us, they did not divide
Our union. You young ones, who have pried
And found us, think: you too may be defiled;
Break not the bond of man and wife and child.