The Angry Exile: Lessons must be learned?

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Lessons must be learned?

On a slightly different topic our state Premier, John Brumby, is making the standard political "lessons must be learned" noises. I'm not exactly clear what lessons he's talking about.

As the death toll from Australia's worst peacetime disaster climbed to 130, Mr Brumby said the traditional advice to households under threat from bushfires — "stay and defend or leave early" — may be reviewed.

Well, could be something in that. I've not been here long enough to judge and this is the first major bush fire I've been around for (having left the Blue Mountains a few days before the big fires there in 2001). But if I lived in one of these suburbs or towns right out where they meet the forests and someone knocked on my door, spoke about an approaching fire and offered me the choice of staying to defend or leaving early he'd find the end of the question was being addressed to a fucking blur heading towards the least smoky horizon.

Fire experts also claimed that inadequate fuel reduction in forests around Kinglake and other burnt-out regions of the state may have contributed to the disaster.

I'm no expert but could there ever be sufficient fuel reduction? There's only four million people or so in Victoria and the state is the size of the UK. Where is the manpower and the resources going to come from? Let's not forget that the bloody place is pretty much made to burn. I wonder if there's an element of hubris here, a desire to believe in ourselves and our ability to fix or prevent or otherwise avert natural disaster. Look at all the incredible things we can do, look at the inventions, the technology. Well, yes, we can fly to the moon (though clearly that's no trivial exercise since it hasn't been done for nearly 40 years) but what fucking use is that when faced with an earthquake, a tsunami or a big Aussie bush fire? I may be 100% utterly wrong here but as far as I can see the lessons to be learnt from this are (a) decide for yourself when to get the fuck out and (b) buy insurance.

As I said before, the authorities, especially CFA and SES, do their best and I really don't want to have a pop at the state or Commonwealth government right now. Disaster management and relief is one of the few things I think government is really good for. If Brumby is saying that there's something to be learned from every disaster then fair enough, but bearing in mind that a significant part of this is down to a small number of individual fuckwits who can't lay off the Swan Vestas I think he's doing himself, his government and the emergency services down if he's suggesting it's been a bit of a cock up. I can think of a lot of stuff the Victorian government has done that I can criticise, and normally I look at things and think how much better they'd be if the bloody government could just keep its hands off. Today I look and think how much worse it could have been.

UPDATE: I suppose this is the sort of expert criticism about inadequate fuel reduction they're on about. Hmmm. Might be something in it, but I just don't know enough about it and it still seems that everyone in the state could chuck every dollar they make at the problem and there'd still be more that could be done.