The Angry Exile: Bloody whinging .coms

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

Sunday 22 August 2010

Bloody whinging .coms

Possibly because the UK election got some pretty good news coverage here I think news.com.au are a little upset that it's not wall to wall coverage of the Aussie election in the UK.

THE federal election may feel bigger than Ben Hur in Australia, but it barely caused a ripple in England's press on Sunday.
While Sky News and the BBC have been regularly updating their viewers on TV and online, the uncertainty surrounding the winner saw the coverage thrust deep inside the international news pages of most of the major Sunday papers.

Oh, boo hoo. To use the local phrase, harden the fuck up. Besides, the first place I tend to look for UK news is The Tellytubbygraph, and second item on their home page this evening? Well, just have a butchers.

Would I be a million miles off if I speculated that the Murdoch owned news.com.au is looking first at the other Murdoch owned media in Britain, and that those sister publications aren't showing much interest in the Australian election? Well, to be honest I've no idea because their boss put The Times behind a fucking paywall and I'm not even going to bother checking to see if The Sun/Nudes of the World bothered to make Aussie politics a higher priority than pictures some girl with her sweater kittens out. But they might have.

The Sunday Times had a two-paragraph story at the bottom of its front page on the election, pointing to a larger story in its international news pages.

Well? It was still on the fucking front page, wasn't it? And if it's to be decent coverage then it has to be in depth inside the paper, yes?

But that was as prominent it got in the newspapers, with The Independent initially more titillated with Mr Abbott's budgie smugglers than the results of the election.
On page 23 of the broadsheet, columnist Katy Guest light-heartedly took Abbott to task for being photographed so regularly in his swimmers.
"The Australians are smart people who have voted with their consciences, but have they made the right choice?" she wrote.
"It could be hard for the world to think sensibly about their prime minster's policies on immigration if our minds can't help turning to the last little shrimp on the barbie."

Yeah, okay, I'll give news.com.au this one. That's just fucking appalling journalism. I've been here long enough to know that they're prawns. Besides, a quick look at their sites show Australian election related stories with picture linked on the home pages of not only The Independent but also The Graun and the Mainly Fail (and Julia Gillard didn't even need to put a bikini on). And I'm not even trying particularly hard, here.

Frankly that's not bad coverage for a country still dealing with the results of its own recent general election and the current leadership election of what was until then the governing party.