The Many Lyves of...

I’d never felt comfortable in that house

Not once, since we’d moved on in,

A rambling, derelict, barn of a house,

Three storeys of age-old sin.

Nobody said there’d been murders there,

Or told of the gypsy’s curse,

Three hundred years of discarded junk

And I don’t know which was worse.

 

The air was dank, and creepy and cold

So I opened the windows wide,

Trying to get some airflow through

To clear the smell inside.

It was musty, dusty, smelt like a tomb

With a corpse, decayed and grey,

We cleaned and scrubbed it room by room

And the smell went slowly away.

 

We tackled the ground floor first, we thought

We could leave upstairs til last,

The stairs were blocked with a French chaise longue

From some distant time in the past,

It was jammed hard up by the bannister rails

So it wouldn’t go up or down,

I said I’d have to pull it apart

And that sparked a Hartley frown.

 

Hartley was the love of my life

Who tackled that house as well,

She said it was a pig in a poke

That its real name was ‘Hell!’

But we finally cleared a space to live

And she worked out a way to shift

That French chaise longue from the stairway by

Trying a twist and lift.

 

The second floor was a nice surprise

There was none of the junk and grime,

The bedrooms still remained as they’d been

Laid out in another time,

So Hartley dealt with the dust in there

While I went up for a look,

The room above was an attic room

And that’s where I saw the book.

 

It lay on a dusty table with

Its pages ragged and torn,

The paper a sort of parchment and

The ink, quite faded and brown.

The cover was ancient leather, cracked

And worn, as if by an age,

‘The Many Lyves of this House’ it had

Embossed, as a title page.

 

I cautiously opened the cover, read

The words on the parchment page,

The light in the room then turned to gloom

And a storm began to rage.

I raced on down to the ground to find

A man outside, who said,

‘For those inside, don’t seek to hide,

I say, bring out your dead!’

 

And a cart stood out in the street outside

A pile of the dead in place,

The street was cobbled, not like before,

But of bitumen, no trace.

And on my door was a huge red cross

With a white and painted scrawl,

‘God, have mercy on us,’ it read,

‘Have mercy on us all.’

 

And there on the floor, inside the door

Was a corpse wrapped in a sheet,

I dragged it out by the feet, no doubt,

And I left it in the street.

On climbing back to the topmost floor

I leapt and pounced on the book,

But the page had turned, and the fire burned

Before I had time to look.

 

London burned in the distance and

Lit up the night like day,

I didn’t know of it then, but it

Was burning the plague away,

And every page in that cursèd book

Brought a different time to bear,

‘The Many Lyves’ that this house had lived

Were all inscribed in there.

 

I slammed that leather cover shut

And I laid it on its face,

Then swore that I’d never open it

While the Lord would lend me grace.

And Hartley, dragged from her cleaning chores

She never could understand,

Why I put a torch to that ancient house

And burnt it to the ground.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Devanshu Rajput]

I hope that I never meet the fate as you in the poem. You did a good job at the end.

A mind-blowing piece. I can feel my self in the thatched house, yet cursed house. I really enjoyed reading this, as I have always.

One selfish request, keep sharing this sort of poems, as this gives me more reasons to be alive.(Literally)

Devanshu

[ANTO]

"And that sparked a Hartley frown." - I love this - its how legends are born David mate - we all know a person who has trademark facial expressions - for my gang of friends it was big Gerry and when he pulled a face it was a 'Big G face' - lol - very good mate.

"Then swore that I’d never open it
While the Lord would lend me grace." - mesmerising turn of phrase DLP.

Wow how many stories you could have got from that book - each one a spine-tingler no doubt. I would have burnt it down too though. Brilliant one - I feel like finishing this review with a Vinty Price "Muwahaaahaaaha" but I wont because I can't spell it.

Brilliant David.

[Marie]

He should have sued the real estate agent. Was this sold as a "one owner" house?

[Woody]

fascinating! a bit of history and a touch of magic. a sort of a trip back in time. I can't but love it.

[andrew mitchell]

A great tale David and done with your usual effortless flair with an unfaltering rhythm. I have just received two books of yours from lulu today so I''ve got over 400 pages of entertainment in total. I look forward to your work.