The Angry Exile: Bend over and grip your ankles!

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

Monday 10 May 2010

Bend over and grip your ankles!

Here comes your Darling.

'Kinell.

7 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...: So the scorched earth policy continues after electoral defeat? For chrissakes, Clegg, do a bloody deal and get these dangerous baboons out!; 10 May 2010 at 19:07
ralph said...: It is time for a new Conservative movement in Britain. As we have seen in Australian Politics a new Grass roots party ( Pauline Hanson) is met with leftist hysteria and a united media which destroys a legitimate voice. The Tories need a new leader, rather in the mold of Tony Abbott, who will give the voters a real choice, not a kind of Malcolm Turnbull who caters to the left by being more left than the lefties.
The obvious first step to me is that public servants and any recipient of Welfare, be it the dole, old age pension or sickness benefit must surrender the privilege of having the right to Vote until such time as they are no longer a beneficiary of the public dollar
This does not mean they would have benefits reduced. They would still get benefits but they would not get the vote until such time as they became contributors rather than takers.
People on the Public payroll have a vested interest in voting for the party which does their careers the most good.
The Torie party needs someone who will make a clean break from this failed policy.
Give them a choice before the people on Tax payers money become the majority. In time the Welfare State will shrink to a reasonable level.
It needs guts to avoid a British or for that matter, an Australian Greece.; 14 May 2010 at 12:45
Angry Exile said...: Tony Abbott is an illiberal fuckwit leading a party of mainly illiberal fuckwits who don't even have the sense to realise how they're raping the English language by calling themselves Liberals. With a gun to my head - and assuming I didn't just take the fucking bullet and done with it - I'd seriously think about voting for another three years of Kevin Rudd than Tony Abbott. The Tories stand an outside chance of getting my vote one day, but not if they chose leaders like him. Oh, and Pauline Hanson is a fucking idiot too.

Good luck selling your idea for electoral reform. Personally I'm nor more keen on it than I am for an Abbott-like Tory leader. Take the pensioners, for example. It's not their fault that the state pension is automatic but you're saying that the second people reach retirement age they're disenfranchised. Why not just reinstate property qualifications and done with it? Why not even move voting rights back a century or so and rid the electorate of a lot of Labour voting fucktoons? Nope, the franchise should remain universal, and yes, even for public sector workers. Abolishing benefits (and taxes at the same time) and shrinking the size of the public sector, now that would get my attention.; 14 May 2010 at 15:57
Anonymous said...: On second thoughts I get it now , you are Ben Elton, I recognize the style. fuck up the UK then come out here to Fuck us up.; 14 May 2010 at 18:17
Angry Exile said...: Have you even read what I've said about Lefties? Have you seen the abuse I've written about Labour? And Labor too? This post is having a go (not for the first time) at a leftwing Chancellor fucking an entire county in its arse. Most of this blog has been about ripping into the left for being the authoritarian cuntbaskets that they are as well as being economically illiterate, or at the very best naive. When I rip into the right the right it's for being paternalist cuntbaskets who are really no more freedom and liberty loving than the despicable cunts on the other side.

You see I come from the left, do you? Well done for looking at the sidebar where my poltics is there for everyone to see. I come from neither the left nor the right, and before you ask no, I'm not one of the centrist softcocks either. Left, right and centre are different economically, and on that scale I'm certainly on the right. But on authoritarian/liberty scales they're much the same. A plague on them all.

And hippy? Have you read what I've said about the eco-tools? And another reason why I despise the left and right fairly equally is the way they've both fucking signed up to tax us all dry and spunk away the money on futile plans to solve problems that don't exist.

Trotskyite? In case what I've already said hasn't made it clear, another hateful, despicable, authoritarian cunt. I wouldn't be even slightly upset if you told me the ice pick went in the fucker's balls first.

And nuke Mecca? Really? With what? And launched from what? I still haven't met an Aussie who won't run into the fucking distance when I tell 'em the place needs to wise up and go nuclear - power and weapons since I'm a fan of both - then it might be an option. Until then the ADF can't nuke square root of fuck all.

I haven't read anything that Ben Elton wrote but I remember him in the 80s. Lips clamped right around the Labour dong as I recall. Somehow I doubt that he'd have the same style.; 14 May 2010 at 18:49
rapa707 said...: Like Ben Elton. you can't take or recognize a joke. HIPPY.Drop dead.; 14 May 2010 at 21:21
Anonymous said...: Sorry, you are a mad
liberal, which is the same thing. Humourless fool. You made me swear and that is a failure in language, bad language in fact.
bored now.; 15 May 2010 at 12:00