Pricksongs & Descants

MORRIS IN CHAINS

We have him, I make this report to the nation. Sleepless search, intransigent effort in the common behalf: our thanks to his captors! Morris has at last surrendered. Pursued night and day through the complexity of our parksystem (Morris, old head, protested: “But only the parks remain 1” Bumpkin! know, then, that is not your crime!), tracked by the undisguisable deposit of sheepshit, am bushed in the end by a massing of passive tourists. The interrogation was brief, the confession not quite so: alexandrian impudence! It will not repeat not be made public. Morris is in chains, his sheep shot. He has requested exile — they all do I — he shall not receive it.

The hunt was long, nor was it painless: Morris trod old paths, forced a suffering of the inveterate green visions, a merciless hacking through the damp growths of our historic hebephrenia. It was perhaps an epic of its kind, our best minds were engaged, and yet this must be granted the captive: it was his own grit and cunning gave it grandeur. Much time was wasted, of course, undue risks taken. Our fundamental error here was probably in the chase itself. But once the remarkable Doris Peloris, MD., Ph.D., UD., assumed command, the end came quickly. She gathered the necessary data, reined in the hunters, set a trap of mechanical crickets, and waited for the inexorable conclusion. All praise to Dr. Peloris! Her wisdom is the State’s blessing!

Encounters with Morris were never rare, but Morris never stayed to fight. Cowardice? who could say so? he had his sheep to care for. Loose shreds of shrill fluting would reach our ears, and, bucking the melodic rack, we would approach, encircle, converge, catch a glimpse of his beardtuft, sheepskin jerkin, leather breeches — and then: gone! how explain it? sheep and all. For a time: confusion, silence, group gloom. Then: a distant report of Morris’ piping and the chase was on again. It was almost as though Morris were challenging us. But simple song against our science! he lost, of course. As is well known, our parks are not connected. It is not yet clear how Morris forded the concrete stretches, but on the other hand, it is no secret that he has friends in the City. Categories of the unredeemed still to be catalogued.

(slippin nightlike through their blinkerin unarkades and splashin here below through the tile sluices I tell ye if they figger to live so close atop each other they gotta excrete less it makes a grim swim of it poor old Rameses and the girls their wool all clotted with that gop and no suns to dry by and overhead the raspin scrape of steel heels needlin the concrete cobble that caterwaul of sirenshrieks the which sure ain’t nothin like the nightjars scares me silly sometimes/well a pox on em old furrylegs! it ain’t the choice is mine god knows I ain’t got no mission! just alfalf and lotus that’s all I’m seekin and these days it’s damn hard to come by I can tell ye/sure hard to it we swooned their old granddaddies but somethin’s clear the matter with this brood ain’t none of em’ll let an old hero rest his achin arse or play a lay clean through and the damn sedge swarmin with them buggers by damn! blessed flock run sick and meatless their hides mange-rotted and all burred and briared nothin but sour froth in the tired old teats and spite of all they’ll get us they’ll get us makes me plumb sick! them slickers they do mean business damn if they don’t! see them jaws? see them eyes? they ain’t kiddin and if you don’t get em first old furrylegs them steelyglass muckers’ll have an end to us so a pox on em you hear? a pox on em!)

There were early crises, these have been admitted. No one doubted the eventual outcome, of course: it was merest Morris versus the infallibility of our computers, after all. Data properly gathered and applied must sooner or later worst the wily old cock. But, perhaps due to an underestimation of the adversary’s perverse vitality, those early expeditions were all too often subverted by disorder, what we can now see as undeniable disorder, were little more than a random series of spontaneous incursions of the sort that most suited Morris’ own patternless and irresponsible life. He just stayed downwind, fluted a few slim echoes off our City walls, and led his panicky pursuants into one blind valley after another. The times grew serious. It ceased being a mere parlorgame. New flocks were reported forming. New pipes were heard, plaintive essays, not to be compared with Morris’ mastery, to be sure, but the oldstyle harmonics was unmistakeable. Rebellion threatened. Dr. Doris Peloris was given command.

On a worldwide appearance, Dr. Peloris reassured the citizens that there was nothing to fear. “All possible cause for panic will be eradicated,” she affirmed with a machined precision, her words destined for immortality. “We shall put an end to idylatry. The studied dissonance upon which our modern State is painstakingly structured will not so easily be corrupted.”

Through the tense days that followed, Dr. Peloris and her handpicked staff of highly trained urbanologists, high above the City, pored over the dossiers of previous forays. Polly and the other systems analysts made octal and symbolic corrections to the operational program, broke down old software systems and reassembled the data under new descriptors, and came up with a new standard programming package for the project, now known as Project Sheep Shape. Boris the Chartchief prepared detailed flowcharts, built three-dimensional transverse Mercator’s projections of the entire park-system, and mapped out Morris’ movements, but both he and the doctor agreed there was little to go on. “Even nonpattcrn eventually betrays a secret system,” Dr. Peloris explained confidently to all present, “but so far that of our subject, which seems largely instinctual, is simply not apparent.” Nan, her personal aide, working out of the newly reprocessed data, reduced Morris’ known personal habits, the natural objects that seemed to attract him, his own minimal needs and the needs of his beasts, manifest psychosexual behavior, and the like, to realtime-based mathematical formulizations, but even these computations proved inconclusive. “No, Nan,” said the doctor gravely, pencil gripped in her teeth, “clearly for the moment the hunt itself must go on.”

She assembled the expeditionary force into emergency session, braced them for the difficult assignments that lay ahead, spoke frankly of old temptations. “You laugh. Yet, we are already, let us admit, to a degree corrupted. As much by our own shaky starts as by Morris. We can nearly admit notes of savagery in our parks, have not yet stifled the wild optimistic call. We might yet be thrilled by the glimmer of disembodied eyes burning hot in the dark forest, by the vision of bathing naiads’ bared mammaries or of nutbrown torsos with furry thighs, by the one-note calls of hemlock pipes. In short, we are not yet freed from the sin of the simple. But it is our children, to speak in the old way, whom we must consider. There must be no confusions for them between the old legends and conceivable realities. It is they who oblige us to grub up, once and for all, the contaminated seed of our unfortunate origins.” Enthusiastic applause. Boris recorded the intensity on his phonometer, wrote out the figure for Nan to report in her log. He nodded toward Polly, and both observed with troubled frowns her unmoved placidity, her subtle smile. “Our strategy is divided into two parts,” Dr. Pcloris continued, “the pursuit and the trap. The second of course depends on the first, which is essentially a fact-finding mission, but which at the same time may serve the complementary function of harassing and exhausting the adversary, forcing predictable pattern-reliance: the wearier, the unwarier.”

Boris and Nan spoke to the doctor after the meeting about Polly. “Her mind wanders,” said Boris. “Her butt’s too plump,” observed Nan. Dr. Peloris nodded wistfully. It was well known that Polly was one of her favorites. “Does she dream of the sweet bird, the bright star?” sighed the doctor. “Well, our interest in her wanes.”

(third national they calls it but spite of that it’s clear I’ve took a hankerin to it all right don’t plot my trackin but seems as how we come on it often enough: silver poplars and old old beeches blowin wistcd measures in the green breeze the mingled elms and hazels and westerlies shiftin the flickerin shadows and a clean brook for moonbathin and drownin the lice in and wanderin ivy-tendrils and foxglove and colocasia mingled with the laughin acanthus and a sweet bluegrass bed half-foot spongy: ain’t the happiest valley mebbe but it’s happy enough it’s happy enough/and old Rameses he savors it here too damn if he don’t he’s gettin old that boy why I have to damn near bullwhip him ever time to make him decamp this little old dell he sure don’t cater none to these long ramblins hasty grub-bins and don’t say as I blame him neither/besides this place it’s somethin nice well sure it’s true they’s some tourists here most of the time but I tell ye they ain’t bad they don’t really bother us none it ain’t them that’s buggin us and after all you know I ain’t the antisocial type in fact it pleasures me no little somewhat to pipe for the younguns tickle em into dancin a round or two and their old folks they like it too don’t let em kid ye otherhow/then top of all that why now and again on lucky days I even experiences an occasion to stick the old staff mongst the tender herbage as the poet says: a hurried little tourist-humpin in the copse when the cops ain’t heedin yes by damn! women! can’t say as old Morris ever passed a one up: why I’ve took on everthin short of newborns and old corses/well ceptin for one mebbe but that there’s another story a tender folklay outa the callow prepubes: it was a sunny midday in the hot bulge of spring drove the flock into a grove of massy old oaks dipped my taut untuftcd flesh in the cool runlet nearby reposed alongside afterward blouse wrapped round my breech lettin old phoebus lap me dry made my first squawky boggles on a set of reeds looked up and whaddaya know? seen this here little goosegirl just stretched out beside me! well I was just a youngun I jolted up and grabbed on my breeches showin forth my shiny white croup and that lifted a titter outa her/then snug in my leatherns I let her tug me down longside her and so we got to talkin I said it sure was a nice day wasn’t it? and she said yes it sure was a nice day at that and I said her geese was mighty pretty and white and she said my sheep they was pretty and white too and just then one of em dumb up on another one and damn if that didn’t set both of us to gigglin / swan! sure seems silly now to talk back on it/she said the sun was in her eye and pulled me down to shade her I efforted a parched kiss her sweet breath reekin of pogonias broad crescent smile starchy folds of springfrock listin over limbcurves and heftin in flushed breezes her toes to the sun old ganders circlin as if in sacred pieties lilywhite fingers fondlin my loose leatherns and grabbin hold like of a she-goat’s milkswoln udder her eyes glittery brown beckonin me and me composin mad poetries in the back of my agitated skull nervous unbuttoned the flowered bodice whitebright breasts slud out of shadows my tremblin lips bent to the nubbins — foul taste! reared back! goosebit by damn! scarred and bloodied one blue pap flappin free and crudded under with some mucusy gop like to made me retch right there in her poor silly face it did!/clutched my mouth and backed off her pulled on my togs and all the time the little goosegirl just lay rigid by the runlet bruised boobies to the breeze and grinnin that mad as mad widetoothed moonshaped grin jumpin juniper! I switched my surprised flock up outa that there grove fast as they would scat just left that goosegirl alyin there them geese paradin around her in that solemn circle and you know let me tell ye I could make out the unsubtle arc of her big mounded belly a mile away till the next by god mountain cut off my view! damn! well I ain’t never been back there I can certain ye that but I done some things since well who knows? mebbe even worse yeah mebbe — oh-oh! hey you know Rameses it looks like we just might have to move on damn if it don’t! just seen that there little plumpbodied scout of theirs up behind that knob there! they’ll be on us by — ah! don’t look at me like that old trouper! tain’t my fault! and look we still got all night ain’t we? the third national! well odd number’s god’s delight and ain’t it so?)

Dr. Peloris drew up a detailed set of assignments, instructed the team on basic methodology. But before the expedition could get under way, an unforeseen incident occurred: Polly disappeared. Nan cursed, Boris shook his old shaggy head. An entire day was lost in the search. We came across her at last alongside one of the park canals in the Third National, her plump white body splayed out in a bed of plastic nasturtiums, eyes glazed over, simpering smile on her flushed red lips.

“Poll on the sward,” clucked Nan, and macrofilmed the scene.

“Morris?” demanded Dr. Peloris of the girl.

“Morris was not here.” Polly’s slow uneven voice reached us from a hollow echoing distance. “No. Not him.” Rugged announce ment I A man knelt, blessed himself in the blood of the wound.

“Morris!” cried the doctor paling, but by then the man had disappeared.

A gloomy uneasy silence settled over the group. This had been entirely unexpected by most. Dr. Peloris probed the girl, then dictated a field report to her aide, detailed the apparent causes and effects. “And, oh, Nan,” the doctor concluded in a clear voice that reached us all: “seal it with a cygnet ring.” Her everready humor broke the spell. We laughed heartily, stood eager and ready to be of service. Cheerfully, we received our equipment, motored to our posts. It was the beginning of the end for old Morris.

Meanwhile, the bearded sheepherder popped up in one park after another. He eluded us less frequently now. Upon sighting him, we recorded his behavior for approximately four hours, then made an intentional appearance to set him trotting again. The sheep were slow, grazed all too leisurely, slept, drank, bred, shat across the green spaces of our public places, nubbing the last of the old hills. Could Morris have made it without them? The question is academic. Morris included them, they him, his speed was describable only by theirs.

(as if I ain’t havin troubles enough old Ramescs stages him an insurrection the sonuvabitchl had it in for his old buddy Morris ever since I cropped his marbles and hell I didn’t wanna do it but the stock was multiplicatin past all reason and I had to halt it somewheres they was draggin me down to a near standstill: tried to explain it to the old tup but he wouldn’t listen had to get his daily diddle he did so what could I do? I roasted a coupla the younger lads and docked the old ram but no I shouldn’ta done it by damn! shouldn’ta done it! old RamesesI whatever got into me? if I just had time to sit down and think I i£ you’re gonna eunuch cm you gotta do it young by damn/so that did it he sets about to right the score and so this here afternoon we make the hard trek up into the big hills find us a green knob and settle us down for a breather we’re staggerin sick from runnin and dimbin just too much! had to leave a poor old ewe behind on accounta she was just too slow from carryin I left her with no one to care for her damn near made me cry/but now then the sun was lowerin peaceful down in the plain the flock grubbin the good mountain clover and me with a big slab of roast ram outa my pack my cup frothin with snowy white milk and first thing you know I’m noddin off dreamin of the old country the slender maids and soft halfforgotten lays me spread out with a fancy little phyllis of just fourteen and never yet mown and I’m just creepin in her kirtle with her pantin fast and tonguin my ear when I wakes of a sudden finds me in the midmost of the motherin flock one of the old girls nudgin me in the face with her wet nose and old Rameses’ bells clangin not far off/can’t see plain at first sun down and moon just a fingernail but yes! they’re buttin me towards the old ram! still got my fuddled mind on the old country and can’t arrange the landscape straight for a moment: but then it hits me! the precipice! them goddamn ewes is nosin me towards the precipice! oboy I try like hell to haul my feet under me but them bitches just knock me down again can’t hardly see nothing only just their white wool rollin spooklike in the moonlight their hooves and black faces blocked out by the nightdark and I keep hearin them bells like a tinny dirge gettin nearer and nearer jumpin juniper! a goner by god! and my heart’s poundin and I’m mebbe even screamin and then oh my god I catch a clear horrifical glim of the edge: pale vision of the plains way down below/old Rameses he’s slowly givin ground edgin aside to grant me space to slip of! and away and I furious grab out at the old gruff but all I get is his damn bells and the ewes ain’t pushin directly now the old bellwether is movin aside but they’re fumblin around clumsy and confused and I know I gotta go any minute — but suddenly quicklike I clap the bells on the nearest mother and send her flyin and janglin off to the right and over the cliff: half the flock follows her over before you can’t hear the bell no more me clutchin at last and hangin on to old Rameses’ hind hoof/and then finally it’s over and I stagger over by the rocks collapse grabbin for breath Rameses his troops cut to ribbons droops in retreat to the nearby copse can’t sleep all night myself but by mornin I can see the old ram and I have found our truce: what’s left to trouble us won’t be neither of us)

Data streamed daily into Dr. Doris Peloris’ skyhigh headquarters. Only rarely did Morris escape our network of observers now, and then but briefly. His least event was recorded on notepad, punch-card, film, tape. Observers reported his noises, odors, motions, choices, acquisitions, excretions, emissions, irritations, dreams. His longest disappearance lasted only three days: at the end o£ that time, some dead sheep were discovered in a ravine, Morris located up in the mountains, so-called, less than an hour later. The report was rushed to Dr. Peloris, high above the City.

“Little matter,” the doctor replied, smiling warmly, turning from her machines. “We have him now.”

Instructions were given to wait for a few hours, then harass him down out of the mountains. Dr. Peloris moved Expedition Head quarters to a skillfully concealed bivouac area within the Third National Park. There, she prepared the reception for the old shepherd.

“You see, Nan,” she explained to her aide that evening, “it is now certain that Morris will camp here in this valley, beside this canal and that grove, within five days. The order of his disorder, as exposed by Boris’ charts and the processed data, forces him to do so no matter what operations his mind might undertake in order to arrive at what he would tend to think of as a decision. Unless, of course, it included the foreknowledge that we await him here. And who knows? perhaps even this knowledge would not suffice to break the power of pattern over mere mind-activity. Were the situation not so critical, I might enjoy the experiment.” Nan smiled faintly, lit the doctor’s cigarette. “Certain precautions will make our job easier, Nan. Please request that the water in the canal be generated with slightly increased velocity, and if necessary, create small obstructions that break the surface. Until Morris is captured there are to be no overcast skies. If this order conflicts seriously with some other department, you are at liberty to alter it to pertain to nights only, but under no circumstances are there to be clouds from mid night until about one hour after dawn.”

“Temperature, Doctor?” “About seventy-five degrees, humidity slightly higher than normal.”

“Yes, Doctor. Is there any other—?”

“Once the adversary has entered the target area, see to it that fragrances of pine, myrtle, and hyacinth are emitted faintly. Take extreme caution, of course, for this can easily be overdone and put our prey on his guard. The mechanical crickets should be turned on at sunset, but only one by one, reaching full strength about five a.m. Make a public announcement about the same time, in order to clog up the park exits a bit. At six, we close in.”

Nan looked up, met the doctor’s gray-eyed gaze. They nodded, smiled knowingly at each other. Six.

(so by damn whaddaya know? brought out a brandnew little lamb this evenin just as old phoeb was rollin in for the night him lendin a soft goldreddish glow to the occasion the little ewe just a youngun too: her first — how is it they mother so sweet the first time? it’s the pain and fright in it I guess — but damn! I knew that! known it for ages just forgot it I guess forgettin ever damn thing forgettin all the old songs too I am/mind wearying down with all this cussed pasturechoppin that’s it! we just ain’t made for it arc we Rameses? gcttin old you are Morris by damn if you ain’t I well of course I still got a little jism left in my jumpers I ain’t givin it up yet I can tell ye but I’m sure as hell on the peterin off side of the old lifearc yes yes time it wastes all things and ain’t it so!/sure is pretty here tonight must be a million stars up there! you know I set to countin them once well hell I was young and had silly ideas I thought they was always the same number of em up there can you imagine? — just didn’t know just didn’t know nothin/hcy! listen at them crickets! why I ain’t heard crickets like that since I was a boy! got the idea somewhercs they’d extincted the little buggers but I guess they don’t give up that easy I guess nothin does and leastly you and me eh Rameses?/well you know old wether we just shouldn’ta come back here I feel disaster in my bones I do but it seems like it don’t really matter somehow — no: when you figger they’da got us one place as another you might just as well go out grubbin the green herbs as gaggin on garbage in the alleys don’t you reckon?/and hey! just smell that spring old eunuch! just listen at them bawdy crickets I makes a body wanna pipe one of the old songs!)

Her hairs was black as silver snails

Her teeth was white as gold

The copse were green as nightingales

The runlet fresh as mold

The runlet fresh as mold

Her ears they twinkled merrily

Her eyes hearked all I said

How lovely life, sang I, would be

If only we was dead

If only we was dead

She quite agreed and plunged her knife

Into my bleeding breast

Sweet maid, you’ve given me new life

Pray, let me have the rest

Pray, let me have the rest

Once her I laid, twice her I laid

I laid her three times o’er

So though she died a virgin maid

We buried her a whore

We buried her a whore

Now if my tune obscure should seem

The meaning overlong

Consider less than life a dream

And more than death a song

And more than death a song

Dawn broke at 5:55. Beside the water, alongside a grove of poplar and beech, lay the shepherd with his flock, facing the eastern sky. At precisely 6:00 a.m., Dr. Doris Peloris and her staff emerged from their concealments, advanced from different directions upon the shepherd. He started up, then discovered the thickening crowds of eager-eyed tourists welling up behind the doctor and her team: he offered no resistance.

“You have been herding sheep,” the doctor said.

“That figures, lady. I’m a shepherd.”

The doctor’s aide snorted: “Fruitless syllogism of eclogic!”

Dr. Peloris smiled. “My black bag, Nan.”

“Now, look here, ma’am, I don’t mean no—”

“Any,” corrected Dr. Peloris. She drew a stethoscope and other equipment from her black bag. “Remove your clothes.”

“My—?”

“Let’s not be impertinent! This is no less difficult for me than it is for you. I refer to those rank fulsome skins you’re wearing, how do you call them? gaskins, buskins — I don’t care, but get them off!”

Morris glared edgily at his captors, at the pressing crowd. Dr. Peloris pulled a pair of scissors from her bag. Morris grumbled, removed his jerkin and breeches.

There were low whistles and the doctor’s aide gasped audibly.

“What is it, Nan?”

“The… the legs, doctor! the fur—!”

Dr. Peloris smiled, hooked the stethoscope in her ears. “I thought you knew,” she said.

While the doctor conducted her examination, her staff methodically exterminated the sheep with hypodermic injections. The beasts died quickly and, it seemed, with a certain satisfaction. Morris, nude, had grown impassive. Only the death of his lead ram seemed to affect him. A single tear formed, slid down his tawny cheek. The doctor’s aide noted it in her examination record.

The examination itself did not take long: eyes, ears, nose, throat, heart, lungs, arterial pressure, routine check for hernia and piles, palpation of the prostate, various vital measurements. X-rays, blood samples, and encephalograms were taken, analyzed on the spot. “Now, a sample of your semen, please,” said the doctor turning her back, replacing the stethoscope in her black bag.

Morris, barbarian and cold-eyed, did not move. “Nan!” said the doctor, nodding back over her shoulder toward the captive.

Her aide slipped a rubber glove on over her left hand, squeezed some oil into it. Morris made one last desperate lunge, but Boris and another grabbed him, held him rigid. The crowd of tourists bulged closer. Nan approached him, executed three or four expert movements. Morris’ bronzed and bearded face flushed yet darker, his eyes widened and lost focus, his mouth seemed to grow full of thick teeth. Nan handed the test tube to the doctor. Dr. Peloris made a hasty smear, peered into the field microscope. “2-A!” she exclaimed with a soft appreciative whistle. “Not bad for a man of his age!”

Morris now lay limp in the arms of the two men. His checks sagged indifferently. Defiance was over. Victory was ours!

Dr. Peloris turned toward Morris, smiled gently. “There is still a place for you in our world,” she said. “You are more than healthy enough to warrant an attempted rehabilitation. I am in a position to recommend you. Perhaps a job at one of our mutton factories to begin with. Would you be interested?”

Morris stared numbly at the doctor. He closed his mouth. Slowly, deliberately, sullenly, he shook his head. “Put him in chains,” the doctor ordered. She closed up her black bag, strode away, to the cheers of the gathered throng.

This, then, concludes our report. Dr. Doris Peloris has received highest State honors, yet it is of course recognized by all citizens that she cannot be rewarded enough. May history grant her that which is beyond our humble means! Though he remains in chains, Morris’ story may not be ended. He has been turned over to the urbanologists and a famous urbaniatrist has taken a personal interest in his case. They admit that Morris is a challenge serious beyond precedent to their young sciences, but reintegration does not seem entirely beyond possibility. We may well, in concert, wish that such might be the case!

(Doris Peloris the chorus and Morris sonorous canorous Horace scores Boris — should be able to make somethin outa that by juniper then there’s bore us and whore us and up the old torus no not so good not so good losin the old touch I am by damn/ahh! Rameses! why’d they go and do that to ye for? it’s the motherin insane are free!)