The Angry Exile: Not a good day for blogging.

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, 2 April 2010

Not a good day for blogging.

I know I did a couple of posts yesterday (it's the 2nd here now) but really they were the arse end of Wednesday night, but being April Fool's Day I've resisted the temptation to blog because for the last 24 hours because it's so bloody hard these days to spot the wind ups. Mr Eugenides demonstrates this by blogging three stories that ten years ago might have stood out as being as likely joke stories but are in fact genuine. Satire may not be quite as dead as he says but it's not in good shape when you have to go to Daily Mash/Newsarse/Onion lengths to write something that's obviously a spoof, and even then I've felt TDM have been sailing depressingly close to reality on one or two occasions. To give you another example, a very hoaxy looking story bearing a hoaxy looking pun in the headline, and oddly in the wimmin's section despite not having anything especially to do with wimmin as far as I could see, was in The Times today.

Hole sale robbery: how to mend those potholes.

Fed up with all those holes in the road? Then pay for them to be repaired yourself, suggests one council leader.

As mad ideas go, they don’t get much pottier than the pothole solution proposed by the leader of Ashford Borough Council in Kent. Fed up with that crater in the road outside your house? Tired of waiting for the council to mend it? Pay for it yourself, suggests Councillor Paul Clokie (below), and use it as a memorial for a pet.

Is he serious? Apparently. He points out that a scheme is already under way in the German village of Niederzimmern, near Leipzig, where for a mere €50 you can sponsor your local pothole, ensuring not only that it is filled in but that your name, or your company’s, is etched into the asphalt.

Clokie is not alone in taking an interest in Niederzimmern: from New York to Krakow, councils have picked up on the idea and are considering similar schemes. Yet in spite of the concept’s popularity, Councillor Clokie’s idea has yet to get off the starting blocks.

In the wake of the harshest winter for three decades, Kent County Council, the body responsible for mending the potholes, has filled in 45,300 of them this year but has yet to dedicate any of them to deceased dogs or cats. “Councillor Clokie has been saying this for a while,” said a spokesman yesterday, who sounded as though the county wished the Ashford leader would stop.

And so on and so forth. Several commenters pointed out that the date was April 1st and that it had to be The Time's joke article. Could be, I thought, but didn't seem as entertainingly stupid as, say, installing a particle accelerator on London Underground's Circle Line. But then neither did changing the name of Queen Street in Melbourne to Republic Street - oh ha ha chuckle guffaw there goes the other rib.* So I googled the Councillor's name and the word 'pothole' and found two stories in the Kent locals that backed it up, one from March 19th and one from the 11th. Yes, I suppose a determined hoax could have involved planting the story elsewhere in advance in case anyone checked but it seems more likely that the mad bastard is serious about charging for road repairs that people already pay taxes for. And that's what made me think it might not be a joke - because the idea that the state would charge you again for what it's always claimed you pay tax for seems neither amusing enough or fantastic enough to be much of an April Fool prank story.

And even if I'm wrong and it does turn out to have bells on the fact that it seems so plausible for modern Britain isn't funny. Not funny at all.

* I may have mentioned before that I'd cautiously go along with the idea of Australia becoming a republic but I doubt that's going to win much more support that making up something about the Queen feeding orphans to the Corgis.