The Angry Exile: While I'm talking about the Daily Mail...

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

Friday 22 January 2010

While I'm talking about the Daily Mail...

... does anyone there know the slightest thing that was going on here in Oz before Prince William got off the fucking plane?

A week ago the monarchy was all but dead in Australia and the march towards republicanism appeared inexorable.

What a load of shite. The situation is more or less this: Kevin ~~Dud~~ leans towards republicanism in principle (just my opinion but it's one of his few good points) and made a few noises before the last election about possibly giving some thought to re-opening the republic/monarchy debate, but if I recall correctly the only thing he committed to was that it wouldn't be a first term thing. We're still in Rudd's first term. Now, ex-(il)Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull was also vaguely pro-republicanism, though again not strongly enough to make a lot of noise about it, but was replaced by the budgie smuggling Tony Abbot. By all accounts Tony Abbot is fairly keen on the monarchy and doesn't want to let Mrs Queen go. Tony Abbot took over the Libs a couple of months ago, not last bloody week. Sure, he's only the opposition leader but it'd be a damn sight easier for Rudd to move forward with cross party support than with the opposition being lead by a strong monarchist, and I suspect Rudd would prefer to fight over the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme that he's already had bounced back out of the Senate once.

But you don't really get that impression when the Daily bloody Mail are saying that last week the monarchy was 'all but dead' here and becoming a republic seemed inevitable. I'm guessing that someone there heard about the Attorney-General here mentioning that there are people thinking about the wording for a referendum question if, and it's a big if, Rudd decides to ask it. Look elsewhere and you can see how up in the air it still is. And that's just to get the fucking question asked in a referendum. To actually become a republic would need not only a majority of the whole country to vote Yes but a majority of the states as well, and although last time more than 45% were in favour of a becoming a republic that's still more than half a million votes short. Worse still, the Yes campaign didn't get so much as a single state, let alone the four they needed (they did get the ACT but that isn't a state and counts only towards the whole country vote). That was a decade ago and while feelings have probably changed I'm not sure they've changed enough for four states and a majority of Australians to vote for a republic. Even here in Victoria, the nearest the Yes campaign came to getting a state in 1999 (less than 5,000 votes in it), I reckon I know about as many monarchists and those who don't care enough to want a change as I do republicans, and that's a long way from the Daily Mail's apparent belief that the monarchy was all but finished here until Prince William came along and won the hearts and minds of a nation, just as his mother did before.

Load of bollocks, and I think strongly deserving of a new masthead.

Google is your friend, fucknuts.

1 comment:

radical royalist said...: I sometimes wonder, what kind of correspondents British and other European media employ down under.

Not only The Daily Mail gets many topics wrong.; 22 January 2010 at 15:35