The Angry Exile: Oooh, there's a surprise

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 13 July 2011

Oooh, there's a surprise

Click for linky

She said we wouldn't have it in this parliament and has upset a lot of people by reneging on that promise, and even those in favour of a carbon tax (bearing in mind what I said yesterday) must secretly be aware that a Prime Minister who goes back on their word cannot really be trusted. I can't imagine the same thoughts have not occurred to Gingery Dullard herself, so it's not really much of a surprise that she's less than keen on an early election to try to get a mandate for the tax. Her personal approval rating was already down to 29% (with 62 disapproving) last week before the carbon tax details were announced, so she probably would be punished at the polls and she must know it. Why the hell would she call an election?

Her best hope is to leave it as long as possible and hope that the voters' memories are short and that the recycling aspect of the tax - that is, recycling money taken from so-called 'polluters', who naturally pass the costs on to the paying public, into ~~bribes~~ cuts and benefits for the paying public so they don't feel the effect of the higher bills - works in her favour. Perhaps it will, but of course it does rely a lot on those not-bribes being enough to avoid the pain of raised costs. It strikes me that it might not if some of those companies spot an opportunity to increase margins by using the confusion of expected price rises to increase prices a little more than is needed. And not if the estimates of the adjusted value of those not-bribes blogged over at Thoughts on Freedom the other day are reasonably accurate. If both of those happen then the pain of the carbon tax will be impossible to hide and there will be no doubt about who to blame. In that case Julia's best hope resides in one man.

Ladies and gents, the leader of the opposition, Tony 'Mad Monk' Abbott

Yes, Tony Abbott, who also professes to be of the warble gloaming faith and have plans to control the climate according to the prophecies of the Goracle, though quite what his 'Direct Action' plan involves is not entirely clear beyond that he thinks planting trees and giving grants is a good idea. How many trees and how much in grants and to whom is not easy to find out, but in short it sounds rather like an Abbott government would take it upon itself to pick winners in much the same way as Labor do. This is because, as I have bitched about more than once, the Liberals aren't really any more liberal than Labor.

Not only that but the odd Abbott related PR gaffe isn't exactly unheard of, even if it's sometimes a gaffe that's been manufactured out of nothing and out of context by a Labor-philic media. Perhaps Julia is hoping for more of the same before calling an election? She might be lucky but if so Tony'll need to do something spectacularly outrageous to give an unpopular PM leading a minority government a majority at the next election. Who knows, elaborating on his own carbon tax plan might do it.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, folks: a pair of total tools whose only saving grace seems to be that each looks good when compared with the other. Picking between them is like picking between, oh, say, Cameramong and Gordon Brown. You sure as hell want one gone but you're not really all that keen on having the other one in to replace them.

'Kinell.