THE MERRY-GO-HOUND
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Merry-Go-Hound By ERNEST L. MEYER RESIDENTS of our street have been mystified by the curious spectacle of a dog who keeps running around and around our little Stuyvesant Park without stopping....
...This seemed to annoy the dog, for he made a leap for my shins...
...I go round with the czars and round with the reds, Round with the buzz-saw lopping off heads...
...I go round with electrons and constellations, Rising republics and tumbling nations...
...I gave the dog my permission...
...I go round with panics, and show my heels To full dinner buckets and promised new deals...
...And the ageless hope of millennium...
...He was just completing his 819th lap when I asked him politely the cause for his strange behavior...
...I am running around and around," he replied while I kept abreast of him at a dog-trot, "because everything is running around and around, and I want to feel myself part of the cosmic pattern, if you get what I mean...
...I am at this moment completing lap No...
...I go round with machines that hum and fly, Grinding out gadgets that no one can buy...
...I go round with cycles of plenty and famine, Round with the rich and the street-corner gamin...
...Not quite," I confessed, trying to keep in step...
...It's doggerel...
...I go round with kindness and round with crime, And the millions chained to the wheel of time...
...I wanted to illustrate in my own humble way a gigantic and universal law...
...I go round with morals and changing styles, Perennial jokes and perennial smiles...
...I go round with booms and round with depressions, Round with recovery, and round with recessions...
...18,678, still two jumps ahead of the dog...
...Hence I began to run aimlessly, yet significantly, around and around...
...I go round— "Pardon my interruption," I told the dog at this point, for there seemed to be a depressing monotony in his monologue...
...I go round and round...
...Pondering these things, and after an earnest study of Spengler and other savants, I could no longer find philosophical justification for sitting on my haunches or for walking in a straight line...
...I go round with war and round with peace, And my circular journey will never cease...
...Nor does he seem in search of his master, for his journeying is singularly sniff-free...
...I can't call that poetry...
...I go round with laughter, and round with tears Spilled on the spokes of the spinning years...
...And while we loped around and around the little park, to the wonderment of pedestrians, the dog chanted: I go round with the planets and round with the sun, And my circular journey has hardly begun...
...I go round with hell and with Kingdom Come...
...So I sought out the dog himself...
...Well," explained the dog patiently, "history, as you know, repeats itself...
...3) That someone has cut down the animal's favorite tree...
...I go round with Napoleon, and round with Hitler, Round with all giants who grow leaner and littler...
...Exerting myself, I kept ahead of him, and I, too, began to run aimlessly but significantly around and around the little park...
...As the great wheel spins I go round with Rome And the changing mobs at St...
...None of these theories, however, appeared reasonable to me...
...when I lack all reasons I go round and round with the swinging seasons...
...The dog does not seem mad, for he lopes at a contented and amiable pace, lending the illusion that he will get somewhere if you only give him time enough...
...This round-abouting is a tiresome business, even if I do serve science by illustrating, in my own humble way, a gigantic and universal law...
...Hence we find history a rather monotonous succession of war times and peace times, of famine and plenty, of government and anarchy, of flower and seed, birth and death, order and chaos...
...I go round with Wallace and round with Willkie, And round with Dewey and men of his illkie...
...2) That the dog has lost his meat ration-point book...
...And now, with your permission, I will hearten myself with a bit of poetry, for the rhythm lends impetus to my round-abouting...
...Peter's dome...
...As the great wheel turns I go round with Benito, Round with the mammoth now changed to mosquito...
...That is, events in our universe move not in a straight line, but in circles...
...In a word, my good sir, history is a tremendous ferris wheel, but because at any given time we occupy but one little coop in the huge circle we consider ourselves unique, important and progressive, even though we get no place at all...
...Various observers have put forward these explanations: (1) That the dog is a rare breed known as a merry-go-hound...
...Opinion has been divided as to the reason for the dog's odd conduct...
...I go round with the devil and round with God, And the thorns and blooms in the whirling sod...
...I go round and round, for I have no goal, And tunnel in circles like the stone-blind mole...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 42
