The Awful God
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,
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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