The Angry Exile: A hero on many levels

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 14 November 2011

A hero on many levels

Most Brits of I'd guess thirty years and up will probably be aware of who Simon Weston is. For those who don't I'll summarise: Simon Weston is a former soldier, a member of the Welsh Guards, and is a veteran of the Falklands War in which the ship he was on, the RFA Sir Galahad, was bombed by an Argentine fighter. This caused many casualties, including Simon Weston himself who suffered nasty burns and had to go through a long period of plastic surgeries and recovery. Unsurprisingly the guy had his ups and downs but he went on to become a quite remarkable man, allowing documentary makers to record some of what he went through as was treated and recovered from his injuries, setting up the Weston Spirit charity, becoming a motivational speaker, meeting and becoming friends with the pilot who'd dropped that bomb on the Sir Galahad. Yep, the man who dropped the bomb that killed many of his mates, and nearly killed him, leaving him with almost 50% burns instead, Weston has met and shook hands with and told that he knew it was nothing personal. And despite all that he still finds the time to be a husband and a dad to his family.

I make no bones about it, Simon Weston is a man I admire for many reasons. As much a hero as any man or woman who joins up in the knowledge that that choice potentially could cost their life or alter it as dramatically as it did Weston's, but also heroic for the way he's lived since then. In fact apart from the typical tendency of a Welshman to support absolutely anyone playing against the English rugby team up to and including the Underworld First XV there's not a lot you can say against the bloke, and a short while ago I read something he said in an interview that means I'm inclined to let him off even that.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ANTI-CAPITALISM PROTESTS?

Some people have no understanding of reality and have a chip on their shoulder about money and seeing people living in wealth. They don't realise that wealthy people are wealth creators and it's a foolish standpoint because socialism doesn't work....

Oh, wait, that's not all of it. There's some more.

WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ABOUT THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM?

I would make the taxation system fairer – I don't think you should have to pay 40pc. If you're earning more, you're paying more, end of. Why should you be penalised for being more successful?
I don't actually mind paying my taxes, but what really gets me is that we don't seem to adequately punish those people who scrounge off the system and, quite frankly, we make it too easy for them to do it in the first place. There's far too many people spuriously claiming benefits, including disability benefits, costing us as a country in excess of £3 billion annually, who are preventing the genuinely needy from getting proper support and helping those honourable ones who do want to contribute to society in whatever way they can....

I've no idea about the guy's politics and for all I know I might disagree with him on dozens of other things - actually I even disagree with the bit about minding taxes, mainly because so much of it is spunked away on useless vanity projects - but this... this he gets. And at a time when it seems almost fashionable to blame the world's financial woes on a free market that didn't exist and an perfectly reasonable desire to minimise tax exposure rather than the real villains, government profligacy and deliberate policies of boom inducing unrealistically cheap credit, it's good to hear a well known and respected figure like Simon Weston say otherwise when no politician of any main party would dare to.