This one day a mouse covered in platinum sheeting went for a
ride on his toady-steed. Nothing was intended to be gay about
this for the mouse was in a furious mood…someone had stolen
his innards in the night! Mouse was sure he knew who had
them: it was Khat al-Majnun, the fairy fiddler who lived under
fat gnarled tree at the crick of the creek. He’d took ‘em to
make gut strings for his fiddle and it was well known mouse
guts made the best strings. It was equally well known that our
mouse, clad in platinum, had the best set of guts in all
mousedom.
Now, his primary assets were gone for a fairy fiddler sawin’ upon
‘em to make ratchety tunes full of cat scratch. His platinum
garb flapped and clacked loosely about his disemboweled
deflated frame. In his jovial pride he disdained for more
sonorous metals like brass or bronze, such as bells cast from
‘em that scare the daylights out of night. He craved the
superior gleam of platinum, and never mind if it did not ring
when dinged.
Now he made to suffer to the dim-toned misery of his own riches,
born of his disappeared britches.
He saw the gate and promontory wall of al-Majnun’s fairy fort up
on the ridge of rubble. Just like that itinerant tuneless dog, to
place his keep up on a wall where one had made to climb ‘em,
and haul oneself up rocks and bars to come to where he made
his music in this wild sanctuary keep.
A tower he had made, a private minaret, on top he’d sit and play
the night away, keepin’ the moon company on her creep.
Mouse came up and entered in, expectin’ to find old Khat all
unawares—but sly Majnun knew all about, from finches on the
wing, and all his trap was gaily set and strung with mouse
entrails.
The spring was knocked and launching out came several bows
like arrows shot and sawed an’ stroked away, at all the strands
of mousey strings stretched out for to play.
Mechanically the bows kept up and all the room was filled with
din and clamored harmonies no fit for fairy nor fox to play.
Mouse slapped paws across his ears and begged the song to
stop. The more he begged the louder it got, ‘til Majnun the
Mysterious Khat came out to say:
“Now what? You don’t like the music I made from the vitals of
your organ? Now don’t you think this is the most majestic
plagal mass wind ever played? Your contribution to the
Church has made this happen; be glad! Rejoice that now
you’ve made a way for the voices of angels to trumpet our way.
Now how do you stop your ears? Do you fancy yourself
Ulysses trying not to hear the Sirens’ eerie melodies? Unclasp
your ears and listen to the contrapuntal fugue that what’s inside
of you has made.”
So mouse forced then to listen to what seemed so gross display
was taken into visions by the harmonic calibrations Khat chose
to display as he tuned the gutted strings. So mouse proved then
a guinea pig for the mad Khat’s machine for using sound to
stretch apart the veil and travel somewhere out in time along a
trail of whatever cantata caterwail one comes to.
So where was mouse? Who wants to follow? Who wants to hear
that gut-bowed song? If you know the words then follow
‘long.
