Rhyme and Punishment
A dystopian short story
This story is my submission for the monthly Symposium of the Soaring Twenties Social Club. This month's topic is “E_ection”.
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Thirteen stern faces looked down from the high dais. Cameras clicked and bulbs flashed casting ghostly shadows on their stern, haggard faces contrasting with the eager faces filling the gallery; men and women waiting to hear each word all around and high above looking down on the proceedings. A stench of ice cold fear filled the drafty room, so cold despite the bodies.
And there in the middle a lonely figure sitting alone at a table facing the thirteen stern men.
He was a small man and slight with round glasses, a serious, brooding man, as if he was not to be cowed easily, as if there were hidden depths to him. He was afraid but determined. A man hounded and cornered with nowhere to turn and nowhere to run and nothing to lose will always fight to the last.
The man opposite him, the Chairman, the centermost man of the thirteen, was, in many ways just that: the opposite. A bullfrog jaw, a purple, thickened nose, and tiny dark eyes that darted about insatiably for his next victim.
The gavel dropped, the curtain opened, and the play began.
A hush fell on the grumbling crowd.
“Mr Oliver,” the Chairman’s voice boomed out, “Mr Oliver, you and I both know why you are here but I think it will do some measure of good to go work through the warp and weft of the matter for those gathered, for the citizenry of this great nation, and for my esteemed colleagues on the bench.
“Some time ago it came to the attention of the authorities that there were forces, ideas at work in this country that were contemplating, planning, and executing procedures, programs, and projects to undermine and destroy this great nation of ours. When this news reached the authorities and those authorities, who will be dealt with in due time by the relevant supervisory bodies, failed, failed (he banged his fist on the table) to act, failed to defend the people from this threat from without which had become threat from within through books and magazines and journals and other sordid publications that had wormed their way into our country, our society like so many termites in a once sound and strong house, I took it upon myself as a representative of the people to investigate, inspect, interrogate the sources of this threat, the culprits responsible for this attack on our country, our way of life, and the very ideas at the core of this danger to our great nation.
“And so, Mr Oliver, we come to you.” The Chairman looked down his purple nose at Oliver. “I use the term Mr loosely as you are in my eyes not a man but a beast, a wicked and deranged parasite intent on—on” (he was becoming exercised, his face flushed) “destruction! But, out of a sense of decorum and respect for the citizens gathered here I will call you Mr, and as a show of goodwill.
“So we come to you, Mr Oliver. You have been identified by your peers as a member of this cabal, as a threat to this country and its people, as a purveyor of the words and ideas that at their heart hold the seed of destruction. The truth of this is already known. What we must now hear is what will amount to a confession from your disgusting lips to the ready ears of the people, a confession of your crimes that you may be once and for all removed from the populace, from the society of the people whom you so wished to harm.”
Through this tirade Mr Oliver remained silent, staring straight ahead at the spot in the wooden dais behind which the Chairman’s leather-clad feet rested.
The Chairman’s voice boomed out. “Mr Oliver, are you now or have you ever been a poet?”
Gasps. Murmurs.
A ghastly charge for a ghastly crime. Everyone knew the charge but hearing it was something else. It reified the dark threat represented by the diminutive man seated in front of them, the lone man in the arena, the gladiator, not cheered on but against the crowd.
“You stinking poet!”
“Silence!” said the Chairman. “Now, Mr Oliver, I know the answer, we all do. But we want to hear it from you. So I’ll say it again. Are you now or have you ever been a poet?”
Clarence Oliver took a deep breath. He smiled and looked straight at the Chairman.
“Yes.”
A collective gasp. Angry murmurings.
“I knew it!”
“Quiet! Mr Oliver, how long have you been a poet?”
“My whole life, I suppose.”
“Your whole life? What do you mean your whole life? Who is responsible for this? I want names. I want co-conspirators. I want them all.”
“Who is responsible?” Clarence thought a moment. “Who is responsible for me being here?”
“What do you mean? Your parents? Your parents did this to you?”
Clarence shook his head. “No, I suppose I’ve always been a poet since the day I was born.”
“Since before you could walk or talk?”
“In a way, yes.”
“How can you be a poet when you can’t even talk? It’s absurd. Explain.”
Clarence hid his surprise. He hadn’t expected the chairman to be interested in anything he had to say. “Being a poet isn’t just about writing poetry. It’s about living life here and now, it’s about observing, being an observer of human nature, the good and the bad.”
“Oh so I suppose this is the sort of thing you observe, is it?” the Chairman said, indicating the room, the proceedings.
“Yes, this is perfect fodder for a story or a poem, just the type of extreme example of a lone man against the combined might of the people whipped up into a frenzy and the government hell bent on doing whatever it can to demonize, to create a scapegoat to put forward as a common enemy.”
“Show us.”
“What?”
“Show us. If you are really a poet, give us a bit of poetry about this hearing.”
Angry murmurs in the crowd. Was the Chairman, the chief inquisitor of all people, really encouraging this filthy poet?
Clarence smiled deprecatingly. He wondered where the courage came from in such a situation but decided it was best not to wonder and just to act, to have a bit of fun.
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works. You’re not my client and I don’t work for free, not for such a commission.”
“Ha! You see?” the Chairman said, looking around the room. “Not some high and mighty poet but a capitalist like the rest of us.”
One of the silent committee members to the right of the Chairman, a man with immense drooping jowls and sinister eyes, said, “Do you approve of him now that you know he is a capitalist?”
Flustered, the Chairman said, “No, no, of course not.”
Clarence shrugged. “Do you work for free?” He looked up into the gallery above. “Do any of you?”
“We do real jobs!”
“Silence or I will empty this chamber!”
Clarence smirked at the empty threat. The Chairman needed an audience, wanted an audience.
Clarence could work with an audience too.
The Chairman leaned forward, his eyes saying, ‘Give me some red meat to toss to these animals.’ “Well, let’s hear something then.”
“Chairman…” the jowled committee member said.
The Chairman held up a hand. “We must be sure. I wouldn’t want to send a man to the gallows without being sure of his guilt.”
“Isn’t that what we do?”
“What? No, no,” the Chairman said, whispering. He spoke up for the whole gallery to hear, “This committee has never convicted an innocent man and it never will. We are just but fair in our defense of this great nation. Every citizen has the right to a fair hearing.”
“In theory, but you decide what’s fair,” Clarence said.
“True, true,” the Chairman mused, then, awakening from his musings, “the accused will speak only when spoken to. Let’s have some then.”
“What?” Clarence said.
“Poetry. Ugh, even the word leaves a foul taste in my mouth. Disgusting. Let’s have some.”
“That was quite poetic of you.”
“What was?”
“Even the word leaves a foul taste in my mouth,” Clarence recited.
“Poetic? Me? How dare you, you diseased boy.”
Clarence shrugged. “Merely an observation. I still don’t work for free.”
The Chairman groaned. “Not a commission, then. Just something, anything you’ve written.”
Clarence thought then recited:
Beside the Tiber’s ancient twisting course,
Stands Nature’s own cathedral, land man wrought
Beneath the hill of Janus, potent force
Beginning Nature’s end of man’s true thought.
A wood shaded and vast, umbrella pines,
Hundreds and more neat columns in a clear,
All else dares not compete, that line for line
Support the soaring needled roof, that tier
Where eagles nest amid the gentle sough
And starlings murmur higher still above
The tow’ring forest’s spreading fractal boughs,
That gilded canopy the sun so loves.
I, reverent in mind and soul, there stay
And awed before high Nature’s altar pray.
More murmurs from the gallery. A woman shrieked and fainted. Running feet. Someone called for water.
“Silence! That’s it then?” the Chairman said to Clarence.
“I suppose.”
“What kind of poem is that?”
Jowls leaned over. “Do we really need to go into such gruesome detail?”
The Chairman hushed him.
“It’s called a sonnet.”
“Why?”
“It’s Italian. Sonnetto for ‘little song.’ A sonnet is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, every other line of the first twelve rhyme and the last two rhyme.”
The Chairman looked stunned.
Clarence explained. “Iambic pentameter, like much of Shakespeare’s works. Each line is five feet, each foot is two syllables, the first syllable weak or unaccented, the second strong or accented. That’s the basic structure though variation is allowed.”
“Shakespeare…” the Chairman mused, “that name sounds familiar.”
“It should be. He’s only the greatest literary genius the English language has ever known.”
Clarence recited:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
“Ah! I like that better,” said the Chairman. “Such music, such—such—”
“Composition, sir?” Clarence said.
“Yes, yes, composition. And the sentiment, lovely. It makes one think.”
Jowls shook his head gravely. “Chairman, I must protest,” he said loudly. “This cannot go any further. We have heard from the accused. He is a poet, he has written and still writes poetry. But to have him recite this filth, to poison the ears of the people in this hallowed hall, it’s too much. I object.”
“That’s very good, sir,” Clarence said. “To poison the ears of the people in this hallowed hall. A little tweaking and it’d be in meter.”
Jowls spluttered. “Be quiet you scum! Chairman, end this at once.”
“Just a few minutes more, Harriman, we’re almost finished but we must be sure.” He glanced around the room at the angry faces, the bulging eyes, wondering at the burgeoning feeling in his breast. To Clarence: “Come then, one more. What other terrors have poets like yourself written?”
“How about one of my favorites?” Clarence said with a smile. He was winning few friends on the committee or in the gallery and, resigned to his fate, felt that he might as well go out with a bang. Dylan Thomas’s classic came to mind but he settled on another poem.
“Here is an excerpt from the poem ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:”
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The Chairman, eyes wide, purple nostrils flared, heart pounding, rose to his feet and applauded. “Bravo! Bravo!”
The hollow noise split the still air of the hearing room.
“Enough! Seize the Chairman!” Jowls screamed.
The other committee members grabbed the Chairman.
“Get your hands off me! I am inviolable! As a member of the Senate, I demand you release me!”
“Seize the accused!”
The crowd, wild-eyed and slavering, needed no further instruction. There he was, the root and source of all that was wrong, all that was indecent, all thought and feeling, this unspeakable horror that made them feel something other than rage and hatred, that made them remember what it was like before.
Clarence wanted to shout, ‘Stop! Wait! I’m just a poet! It’s not me you want!’ but then his self-respect surged up inside him and he summoned the strength to remain silent.
His arms behind him tied to the post, a black bag over his head, Clarence stood waiting. His legs felt weak. The bag smelled of sweat and dust. He wondered how many men and women had had this same bag over their heads.
Feet shuffled on the dirt ground and rope strained as it was tied.
“Who’s that?” Clarence said. His throat was dry, his voice shaking.
“Is that you, Mr Poet?”
It was the Chairman.
“It’s Clarence.”
“Hmm, Clarence, right. I’ll be damned if I can’t see anything with this bag over my head.”
“They’re going to shoot you too, huh?”
“Seems so.”
“Don’t you have friends in high places?”
“Yes but I exchanged them for friends in low places, like you ha ha. My crime is too severe. There’ll be no pardon for me today. But you know what? I’ve never felt more alive. I think—yes, I really do—I think if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“That’s quite poetic, Mr Chairman.”
“Wilfred.”
“That’s quite poetic, Wilfred.”
“Is it? Well, how about that.”
Heavy footfalls.
A gruff voice nearby. “Ready.”
Hammers cocked through the blackness.
“Aim. Fire!”
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.
Would it have too on the nose if the chairman had asked “Are you telling me, that you were a poet and didn’t even know it?”?