Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

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!)

1

A pine forest in the midafternoon. Two children follow an old man, dropping breadcrumbs, singing nursery tunes. Dense earthy greens seep into the darkening distance, flecked and streaked with filtered sunlight. Spots of red, violet, pale blue, gold, burnt orange. The girl carries a basket for gathering flowers. The boy is occupied with the crumbs. Their song tells of God’s care for little ones.

2

Poverty and resignation weigh on the old man. His cloth jacket is patched and threadbare, sunbleached white over the shoulders, worn through on the elbows. His feet do not lift, but shuffle through the dust. White hair. Parched skin. Secret forces o£ despair and guilt seem to pull him earthward.

3

The girl plucks a flower. The boy watches curiously. The old man stares impatiently into the forest’s depths, where night seems already to crouch. The girl’s apron is a bright orange, the gay color of freshly picked tangerines, and is stitched happily with blues and reds and greens; but her dress is simple and brown, tattered at the hem, and her feet arc bare. Birds accompany the children in their singing and butterflies decorate the forest spaces.

4

The boy’s gesture is furtive. His right hand trails behind him, letting a crumb fall. His face is half-turned toward his hand, but his eyes remain watchfully fixed on the old man’s feet ahead. The old man wears heavy mud-spattered shoes, high-topped and leatherthonged. Like the old man’s own skin, the shoes are dry and cracked and furrowed with wrinkles. The boy’s pants are a bluish-brown, ragged at the cuffs, his jacket a faded red. He, like the girl, is barefoot.

5

The children sing nursery songs about May baskets and gingerbread houses and a saint who ate his own fleas. Perhaps they sing to lighten their young hearts, for puce wisps of dusk now coil through the trunks and branches of the thickening forest. Or perhaps they sing to conceal the boy’s subterfuge. More likely, they sing for no reason at all, a thoughtless childish habit. To hear themselves. Or to admire their memories. Or to entertain the old man. To fill the silence. Conceal their thoughts. Their expectations.

6

The boy’s hand and wrist, thrusting from the outgrown jacket (the faded red cuff is not a cuff at all, but the torn limits merely, the ragged edge of the soft worn sleeve), are tanned, a little soiled, childish. The fingers are short and plump, the palm soft, the wrist small. Three fingers curl under, holding back crumbs, kneading them, coaxing them into position, while the index finger and thumb flick them sparingly, one by one, to the ground, playing with them a moment, balling them, pinching them as if for luck or pleasure, before letting them go.