The Angry Exile: Blogroll II and Rearranging the furniture II

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

Wednesday 6 January 2010

Blogroll II and Rearranging the furniture II

Gaaaaaargh. Three missed off the blogroll post. Prompted by his gravatar appearing over on the right I realised that I'd added Constantly Furious to the blogroll but like a twat I missed it in the post. Then there's Polaris who neither got a mention or added to the blogroll, which I'm a little ashamed about because I'm on hers at Wholly Rude and she's been following here for a little while now. Apologies and virtual chocolate, Polaris. Likewise to the Filthy Engineer, who also should have been added quite a while back.

The three column layout has kind of grown on me but quoted text seems to not stand out as well as it did in the old one wide column and one normal size sidebar column layout. I think I need to do some Googling and find out how to put quotes in a neat box. And for some bizarre reason the text size has changed itself on a load of posts, including post titles. WTF? And I still can't get the sodding banner to look the same in Firefucks as it does in Safari and Opera, while in Windows all browsers put the text in the wrong place so that last line about bad language is slightly obscured by bushes on the dune instead of being on the sky just above it. And Firefucks still pushes the image down against the inner lower border. I have absolutely no idea if that's something that can be fixed or if making it look the way I want it to on a Windows machine will bugger it up in OS X, let alone where to begin - I just don't know anything like enough about this stuff. So here it is: I use a Mac and so I've got it the way I want it in the OS X version of Safari (Opera too though only because it turned out that way and not because I made any effort), so if that's what you use then what you're seeing is what it's supposed to look like. Otherwise you'll have to take my word for it.

Ho hum.

2 comments:

Trident said...: Yummy virtual chocolate, my favourite - no calories but all the joy of receiving a gift - thank you.

If it's any help your 3 column looks good on my XP browsers and from my Mac laptop (Safari, FireFucks LOL and Camino), oh yeah!
I see what you mean about your header image - I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't mentioned though.

Keep up the good work...; 6 January 2010 at 06:47
The Filthy Engineer said...: My God, you mean you read the drivel I write. I'm truly honoured, oh Antipodean one.; 6 January 2010 at 07:11