The Song by Cherry Nicely

Once upon a time there was a land of joy ruled by a wise king where love grew on trees and yielded generous fruit everyday such that the people were always happy and singing. One of the rulers of a neighboring kingdom was a vain, selfish and jealous man. Though they didn’t complain in his hearing, the king knew his subjects secretly envied their happy neighbors. His secret police told him some were inter-marrying and others processing visas to emigrate to that land.

Instead of yearning to serve and please his people, the king’s vanity needed succor and his jealousy howled for vindictive satisfaction. The selfish ruler decided he would conquer that land of happiness; claim the people for his slaves and pillage the wealth of the land for his empire.

The greedy sovereign killed his good neighbor, razed the trees and enslaved the happy people. He drove them south into his lands to work as slaves for his people. The evil king made sure their lives were hard and the work was ceaseless.

Yet every day, the happy people woke with a smile and a song. Though their wise king was dead, their homes besieged and they were enslaved, they just kept on singing. They sang about the smile of the moon and the winking stars, of lovers and sweet water in brooks.

Bewildered by their music, the king could not understand why they sang at all and commanded the slave masters to whip them all the more. Still the people sang. They sang about the song of the whip and the cow that walked with a stripe missing from its hide, those good people they sang about everything!

Finally the king could stand it no more and summoned the people to his new palace built of marble and precious stones from their land. He asked them why they sang and the people of joy answered, ‘we sing because we are’. The king could not understand what they meant because they were slaves with no country and no wealth. To hide his ignorance and appease his ego, he ordered them to sing songs about him but they just smiled and that was all they would say.

Infuriated, the king ordered them flogged and immediately banned music on radio, TV, the internet and any public places in that country but still the music went on. Their songs were so infectious, his own citizens begun to sing along with the people from the stolen country. Together they sang about friendship and family. They sang of rainbows and dreams. When the rhythms were irresistible they also danced together.

The kingdom became a musical place where a melody was a greeting and bread could be bought for a song. The unmusical king was driven to distraction and madness by the songs. He could no longer attend to matters of state; he stopped eating and he could not sleep. His infamous libido waned and the many twelve year old virgins placed in his bed did not arouse his interest.

Finally his favourite wife and ministers moved him to his farthest palace. They soundproofed every room, but he could still hear the music. It went on and on and on…

The king raved till he lost the power of speech and became incontinent. Two by two, his loyal acolytes began to abandon him to his insanity. His desperate wife called distinguished health experts but even the charms of international witchdoctors failed to revive him, and the people kept singing. And singing even more.

Slowly the seedlings of love began to take root there. One night the moon rose to coin the sky with silver, liberating the stars from the dark night. All the people woke to sing praises to the moon. In the far away palace, the insane king drowned in a puddle of his own diarrhea while his remaining attendants were out on the balconies singing and dancing to the moon.

‘All hail the new moon…all the hail the moon’