The Angry Exile: Glass houses and pizza cutters.

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 28 July 2009

Glass houses and pizza cutters.

Over at Dick Puddlecote's place I left a comment on his post about the Tasered petrol sniffer. He'd talked about the law against possession of a sniffing substance and brought up a few other daft ideas either already in place or in the pipeline and said

So that's their libertarian credentials well and truly gone.

I replied:

Not entirely, but Australia can be fairly inconsistent. Most states have legalized prostitution in brothels, and amazingly the sky didn't fall in. On the other hand it sometimes seems you need a licence to fart in a westward direction... and three more licences for north, south and east. It is true that failure to win The Ashes will mean that Ricky Ponting must be smeared in Vegemite and staked out in the middle of Melbourne Cricket Ground for a week, though apparently it's not an actual law but a penalty clause in his contract.

Mostly it's low level and mildly annoying nannying, and while that's disappointing and shattered my illusions of a country of free spirited and independent minded Aussies I have to say it's not as bad as the UK was when I left (and of course more lunatic nannying has happened there since - we had a good laugh about the clown shoes).

I think I've said it before but just in case I'll say it now: one disappointment about Australia is that the independent minded and free spirited Aussie stereotype that I thought the place would be full of is either endangered or mythical. My own father in law told me that I'd moved to the most bureaucratic and over-regulated state in the most bureaucratic and over-regulated country, which is something of an exaggeration on his part but as I said to Dick Puddlecote, there's a fair amount of that low level nannying and it is annoying.

That said there is far less of the really worrying Orwellian shit that we left behind, and of course the UK does annoying low level nannying as well as or better than anywhere else in the world - so much so that it's a specialty of one of my favourite bloggers. And today I see that a woman in her late twenties was asked for ID before being allowed to buy a £1.50 pizza cutter. Yeah, the most fearsome weapon in the gangstas arsenal... not. Even here they haven't reached the stage of demanding drivers' licences for a fucking pizza wheel, and only recently I bought some big, shiny and very fucking sharp kitchen knives - yes, DP, they were getting on for the size of that one that Paul Hogan had in Crocodile Dundee, and came in a wooden block that could be used to batter someone to death if you didn't want to fillet them - without providing them with anything other than payment.

There's stupidity in both countries but as I've said before, on the whole it's less intrusive here in Oz. Or at least it feels like it.

4 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...: Nice article, AE.

Agreed that the UK is a pulsating nest of bansturbation, and while casting an eye over the world in search of a bolthole, there don't seem to be many places left who haven't started some way along the same route.

You put your finger on my disappointment that the fabled Australian free spirit isn't as we have been led to believe (although still better than here, granted).

There are still a few places in sub-saharan Africa untouched by such nonsense, so unless the pace of righteousness abates under the Tories (not holding my breath), I may be forced to go all colonial.

;-); 28 July 2009 at 21:06
Angry Exile said...: Couple of reasons for optimism for Oz. One is that every other person seems to be happy to say"yahhhh, bloody government" all the time. The other is that there's plenty of nothing where you can go to get away from the bastard nannies and politicians for a while.; 29 July 2009 at 00:59
microdave said...: Just found this blog from your comments at Obnoxio's. I nearly emigrated to NZ back in the 90's, but chickened out!

Time passes and I cannot take much more of my home country, or rather what it has become. Like Dick, I would love to find somewhere relatively untouched by the creeping malaise affecting this part of the world. Sadly it seems that "Downunder" is not really much better.

Can you, or anyone else suggest somewhere suitable? Or discussion sites, blogs etc that I can visit to get some first hand knowledge?

Whilst getting away from the EU is a priority I have begun to wonder about some of the former Soviet states. Sure they have taken much of my "contributions" to the great project, but they do, at least, seem to have done something useful with it. And the people are all too familiar with intrusive surveillance, having lived with it for years. So I don't think their governments will be able to go down that road again in a hurry.

Sorry to ramble on, but reading blogs for the last six months has brought it home in a way that the MSM never will. And I have added yours to my bookmarks!; 31 July 2009 at 20:57
Angry Exile said...: microdave, I've been giving some serious consideration to starting a new country along libertarian/minarchist lines and inviting like minded people to live the shitholes they currently put up with. I was thinking about a vast floating island of 1000 square miles or so, with big fuck off propulsion systems so we can move it around. The bugger is I have no idea how, so that's that fucked. Until I come up with something better Australia will do me. It's over regulated, but if you want to live in a technologically advanced part of the world where isn't? I came for my wife rather than the independent and free lifestyle, which is just as well because there isn't one. But despite some annoying points, including governments who have no more respect with taxpayers' money than the pricks in Wastemonster, I have to say on balance I prefer it here. There's nanny statism, but Nanny isn't wearing jackboots yet. As I've said on the blog once or twice, I think Aussies may wake up and see the loss of freedom in another country as a warning to stop it from happening here. Sadly I worry that the warning might turn out to be Britain.; 1 August 2009 at 00:44