The Angry Exile: So true...

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

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

Saturday, 2 October 2010

So true...

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Bucko · 755 weeks ago

So true indeed. LOL
Whats the deal with your wierd comments system?

Bucko
My recent post Steparoos Big Adventure

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Angry_Exile 90p · 755 weeks ago

Not sure. I think I've fucked something up on the template but I'm buggered if I can work out where. There's supposed to be two different ways of installing this monkey, and if you lose the comment links on one you're supposed to uninstall it and reinstall it using the other method. I've done both and either way the bastard links stop on 30th September. I'll send a help me report Monday evening if I haven't nutted it out by then.

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Bucko · 755 weeks ago

Bugger.
Can you not go back to your original template and start again with bloggers bog standard system and take it from there? Defaults? I must admit, this is a bit beyond my technical abilities, particularly after a few Guinnesses.
I've just realised, you're in Oz and I'm in England. Everytime we chat at weekend, I'm talking about getting pissed and you're probaly waiting for the toast to pop up. Wierd.
My recent post Steparoos Big Adventure

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 755 weeks ago

If push comes to shove, yeah, but the look of the blog has evolved over time as I've picked up bits of HTML here and there and used it to customise the original. Colours, page and sections widths, second sidebar etc. and last night I added a row of quick link buttons at the top. Going back to the original template would be like the blog equivalent of going through puberty again xD And I'm now thinking it might not change anything anyway - I see that the comment link has come back for the most recent post, and it's not through anything I've done. Weirder still is that the template had no alterations made between that most recent post and the one before it, yet that doesn't have a comment link. I think I'm going to send a WTF email on Monday.

Yeah, it's good here but the time zone difference does make things a little difficult. Guinness for brekkie is a bit strong even for boozy Ockers. And we're now heading into the time of year when it's worse. All through the Australian winter we're nine hours ahead of the UK, so there's a good sized 'social' period from late afternoon here where the UK has just got up, showered and brushed its teeth and won't be pissed off if you phone it. That shrank last night as we moved the clocks forward an hour to EDT, so it's going to be ten hours for most of October until you guys move your clocks back, after which it's 11 hours. That much I know off the top of my head but if I'm travelling within Australia when the clocks move I'm buggered, because half the states do Daylight Saving Time and half don't, and being about 2,500 miles wide there are three time zones anyway. Except in summer, when there are five. Don't ask, my head's fucked just thinking about it.

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