The Angry Exile: An anniversary.

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

Friday 17 July 2009

An anniversary.

This coming Monday is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (or if your head is so heavily shrouded in tinfoil that you can read this without wanting to stab the editor of The Telegraph in the face for letting the paper slide into red top territory*, possibly the 40th anniversary of the faking of the Apollo 11 moon landing). I'll be marking the occasion by watching The Dish for the umpteenth time, and if some light Aussie comedy loosely based on real history appeals get yourself down to the video rental shop and see if they've got a copy. Doesn't have the special effects of Apollo 13 (also a personal favourite) and isn't as bollock rupturingly funny as Star Wars: The Phantom Menses and the other prequels, but a nice way to kill an hour and forty minutes all the same.

On on the subject of the final frontier I notice via the cat counters of Zanzibar that another spacey milestone has happened this week, a commercial satellite launch by a private company. Somehow it seems appropriate that just shy of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing NASA and ESA etc suddenly find themselves with a real competitor. I can't help but feel that NASA's glory days may be behind it and the next phase of the space age will involve private companies and private individuals and private investment. The bearded wonder of the aviation industry has already begun with Virgin Galactic, which is possibly the most fucking grandiloquent thing ever said in the history of human language given that the first vehicle only went 112 KM straight up and then came down again** and the planned replacement for fare paying space tourists will only go a little further. Memo to Richard Branson: "Virgin Orbital" (or even sub-orbital for the pedants) would still be pretty impressive and would at least do more or less what it said on the ~~tin~~ rocket. Still, I have greater faith in the ability of a private company that knows how to run a decent airline (though apparently has a blind spot when it comes to trains) in making advances both in the technical aspects of space travel and in making it possible for less money than the government funded mobs, simply because the private companies can't do what NASA, ESA etc do and ask for more taxpayers' money and so will be fucked if they can't make it a commercial success. And while it would be pretty good to go into space even if only the short sub-orbital trips being talked about at the moment I suspect for the companies involved it's a bit of a side show to the altogether more serious business of launching satellites. If so then SpaceX's successful first launch could well be as noteworthy in a generation's time as Apollo is today***. Good luck to both Virgin Galactic and SpaceX.

*I'll grant that they followed up with a debunking of the conspiracy arguments, but only after being torn apart in the comments of the original article.
**It's now in a museum going absolutely nowhere.
***And I can't see any tin foil hatted conspiracy theorists coming up with a good reason why both SpaceX and the client who paid them to launch the satellite would have faked it ;-)

1 comment:

JuliaM said...: Ahhh, 'The Dish'! I picked this up for a fiver in a DVD sale a couple of months ago, and haven't got around to watching it yet.

Must dig it out...; 18 July 2009 at 06:31