The Face of God

The Face of God, originally published May 2010 by Danse Macabre, reproduced here as their archives seem to have gone down...

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Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

His name was borne by three Kings of England, but he was a humble man. Humble, but not a worker. Not for Richard the daily trudge. He saw the gloom on the faces of the workers every morning, carrying their lunches and newspapers like tokens. His mind was set on higher things, and he saw things they did not.

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

He saw the joy in the world that they didn’t. Their flattened stoop was anathema to him. In the grey, he saw colours, in the plain, patterns, and in the flat, hills and valleys with rollercoaster curves. He hopped and skipped from place to place to the beat of a drum he couldn’t believe they were deaf to.

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

He complimented those who looked sad; often they recoiled, but sometimes he sensed he’d done some good. He gave presents to those who seemed needy; they were often rejected. He offered to let them join in the games he played; they usually refused. He didn’t let it bother him.

of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things

He collected things; sets. One day, everything he could find that was orange, another day yellow. He had a stash, a treasure trove, carefully categorised. Things people had loved, things that had been useful, things that wanted to be reunited with their owners.

You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung

He wasn’t stupid. By their definition, he knew, he was mad. By not sharing their nightmare, he placed himself outside it. But it was he who smiled, who extracted joy from every mundane, ordinary day, as they would have it. He communed with the world, with all of it. He was proud of the stalwart light-guards on street corners, brightening the way and never complaining. He loved to run with the four-legged barkers in the park; they always recognised him and loved him. He thrilled to follow the maze laid out in the white lines, chased along by a cacophony of horns.

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

Sometimes he would just watch. Time around him would stop and he would just stand and look, and take it all in. It was all so beautiful: the colour, the movement, the shape, the form. A silent sunrise on a Sunday morning, the people still tangled in sleepy blankets and strands of dream. Rivulets of water cascading over the concrete kerb and into the drains, a miniature waterfall.

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

Other times he would celebrate, running as fast as he could and screaming at the top of his lungs: ‘I’m Alive! The World is here!’ He couldn’t really get over the fact of the universe’s existence, its wonder.

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

The children seemed to like him, seemed to understand him. He had some small friends, from time to time. Inevitably, they were taken away, mothers scolding. He didn’t mind so much, didn’t blame them. They were only being protective, like ducks whose downy young found a churning weir entrancing.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

Richard didn’t allow himself to get too distracted, though. He knew what he was here for, and he looked for it. He looked for it in the chrome cathedrals of the silver underground stations, whose doors talked to others as well as him. He looked on beaches, following piers out to get as close to the horizon as he could, peering out. He looked in the night sky, at the twinkling stars, trying to decipher their messages.

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

He looked for it in plain sight. Often people completely failed to notice he was there, and so he would sit and watch the suits and mothers hurry by, sit and watch lives play out in front of him. Couples argued, kissed, made up. Kids leapt flights of steps on skateboards. What he was looking for could as easily be in the grace of the arc described by their leap as in the depths of the night sky. It could be in the flick of a woman’s hair, or the pattern of lines on a leaf or a snail’s shell, he knew. He kept his eyes, and all his other senses, open.

Where never lark nor even eagle flew --

He looked for it in the empty spaces, too. He swam to the bottom of abandoned quarries filled with water, the silt hurting his eyes as he scanned the depths. He nearly died of exposure on Dartmoor, standing on High Willhays and peering into the wind. He spent weeks listening to birdsong, entwining the different melodies in his mind.

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

He walked the streets of cities whose name he didn’t know. He walked alleyways where not even the cats were friendly to him. He walked lonely country lanes and busy shopping centre thoroughfares. And all with a smile on his face.

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

One day, he realised that, to see what nobody else had seen, he would need to go where nobody else had gone. And then, he looked upwards… and saw the place he needed to look from. The very spot, in front of his eyes.

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

They found his crumpled body at the foot of a construction site. The site was that of the soon-to-be tallest building in London, the scaffold of which had already surpassed the famed cigar-shaped ‘Gherkin’. It wasn’t clear whether he’d jumped or fallen, although it was later found that he’d done whichever it was from the very top of the building-to-be. His remains were in quite bad shape, but on his face was a singular smile, one that struck everyone on the scene, and remained long in the memory. As the officer in charge of the scene reflected, you could almost call it beatific.