The Angry Exile: The first First Lady of Europe?

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 13 October 2009

The first First Lady of Europe?

While we're on the subject of reminders The Telegraph has a comment piece up on Cherie Blair/Booth, and since we already know her other half is in line for the EU Presidency and since elsewhere in The Tele Dan Hannan (linking to The Times) notes that pressure is being put on Czech President Vaclav Klaus it's a timely reminder of what the first First Lady (or Première Madame?) could be like.

Honestly, has that woman no shame in generating publicity to sell her memoirs? It was bad enough that Cherie Blair revealed to the world that she forgot her "contraceptive equipment" on her annual trip to Balmoral. Poor little Leo Blair will never live that one down. But at the Cheltenham Literature Festival at the weekend she rewrote history again when she declared that it was a 51-49 decision to invade Iraq. Funny that. There was me thinking that her husband had decided with George Bush to go to war with Iraq within days of the World Trade towers atrocity irrespective of what the House of Commons thought. Was it also not the same Mrs Blair who demonstrated her unswerving commitment to the biggest British foreign policy fiasco since Suez by hitting the telephones to persuade wavering women Labour MPs to back her husband in the crucial Commons vote?
...
On an official trip to Australia, she went shopping at a designer clothes showroom. In what might have been a scene from Supermarket Sweep, she left with 68 items worth £2,000 after being told to take "a few things'' as gifts.
She is still the only PM's consort to have had her own taxpayer-funded, part-time press secretary – a tacit admission that she relished courting controversy. It must have felt like a full-time job. There was the tactful decision to sign a copy of the Hutton report into the death of Dr David Kelly at a Labour Party fund-raising event. She then appeared to condone Palestinian suicide bombers only hours after 19 Israelis died in a suicide bomb attack.
Ever the hypocrite, she rightly demanded privacy for her children while she was in Downing Street yet shamelessly exploited them for commercial gain on the international lecture circuit and in those wretched memoirs. Last year, she embarrassed her husband again when she compared him to Sir Winston Churchill.
The truth is that despite his remarkable three election victories and successful conclusion of the Northern Ireland peace process, the disastrous Iraq war will be the enduring legacy of Mr Blair's premiership. In the same Vanity Fair interview last year she admitted that her children had been taunted at school over the Iraq war. She said: "Everybody called their father a liar." I wonder why.

On the plus side, she's not in the same league as Imelda Marcos.