The Awful God Poem by David Lewis Paget

Richard Bryce was a mystery,
He lived on a back street lot,
The house was the old half-timbered sort,
Paint peeled on the old wainscot,
The blinds were drawn through the day and night
And the garden a neighbourhood moan,
Full of the bodies of rusting cars
And creepers, all overgrown.

We rarely saw him out in the street
But he'd peep from the side of blinds,
And stories were told in the neighbourhood
That were often more harsh than kind,
There'd been a wife and a daughter once
But they hadn't been seen in years,
Since the echoing raft of arguments,
Doors slammed, and a flood of tears.

Old Grandpa Bryce had lived in the house
Since thirty odd years before,
He'd worked in the woollen fulling mill
‘Til it closed, just after the War,
His son had drowned in the old mill stream,
Was caught in the paddle wheel,
And Grandpa Bryce was left with the child,
To raise, and be brought to heel.

For Grandpa Bryce was a steely man
Who lived his life by the book,
More like a Prophet, this Abraham
Believed, whatever it took,
That ‘spare the rod and spoil the child'
Would be how that his Grandson learned,
As he laid the rod across Richard's back
‘Til the flesh turned red, and burned.

There was never a ministering angel there
To offer the boy relief,
Only the hard-edged wooden pew
In the church, on a Sunday eve,
And Abraham led the final prayer
In a voice that would damn and blight,
‘Beware you sinners, the Awful God
Will come unseen in the night! '

Richard's mother had died in pain
In the blood of the afterbirth,
She never returned to her home again
But was placed, six foot in the earth,
He never knew of a mother's love,
But only a Grandpa's pain,
And Bryce had ruled the daughter and wife
‘Til they fled one night, in the rain.

The house was suddenly silent then
Just two of them, left alone,
Grandpa suddenly old and frail,
He never went out on his own,
And Richard boarded the windows up
So you couldn't see in from the street,
It looked like an old abandoned place
‘Til the police called round, last week.

We all stood out in the street and watched
As Richard came out of the house,
His hands were cuffed and his hair stood up
And he looked quite down in the mouth,
There must have been twenty cops in there,
All milling around the place,
And one threw up in a paper cup
As we strained to look at his face.

It all came out in a day or two
Just what they had found in there,
The place was sparse, but a giant cross
Stood gaunt in the putrid air,
The skeleton of old Grandpa Bryce
Had been crucified, up tight,
And nailed to his skull: ‘The Awful God
Will come unseen in the night! '

16 September 2012