Recently, I've seen a lot of posts referencing the popular poem first they came. You know the one, first they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I am not a communist and so on and so on. It's a great poem.
It's very short. It's very easy to remember. But there is another poem that I personally like a lot better.
It's called The Hangman by Maurice Ogden. It's longer and it uses some more advanced vocabulary, but I think it teaches the same lesson in a way that's a lot more viscerally horrifying. Let me know what you think.
It goes like this. 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 on the courthouse square. The scaffold stood by the courthouse side only as wide as the door was wide.
The frame as tall or a little more as the capping sill on the courthouse door. And we wondered, whenever we had the time, who was the criminal, and what was the crime that the hangman judged with the knot and twist of yellow hemp in his busy fist? And innocent though we were, with dread we watched those eyes of buckshot lead, till one cried, "Hangman, who is he for whom you build the gallows tree?
" Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye, and he gave us a riddle instead of reply. The one who serves me best, said he, shall earn the rope of the gallows tree. Then he stepped down and placed his hand upon a man 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 son would be struck and gone and so we gave him way and no one spoke out of respect for the hangman's cloak. The next day's sun looked mildly down on roof and street of our quiet town and stark and black in the morning air the gallows tree on the courthouse square. The hangman stood at his usual stand with yellow hemp in his busy hand and his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike and his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, are you not done yesterday with the alien 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 go through all this fuss to hang one man? That's a thing I do to stretch the rope when the rope is new.
Then one cried, murderer. One cried, shame. And into our midst the hangman came to that man's place.
Do you hold? said he, with him that's meant for the gallows tree. And he placed his hand on that man's arm.
And we all shrank back in quick alarm, and we gave him way, and no one spoke, now out of fear, for the 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 the courthouse wall. The third he took, we had all heard tell, was a user and an infidel. And what, said the hangman, have you to do with the gallows bound, and him a Jew?
And we cried out, hangman, is this one he who has served you well and faithfully? And the hangman smiled. It's a clever scheme to test the strength of the gallows beam.
The fourth man's dark, occursing 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, we cried again.
Hangman, hangman, is this the man? It's a trick, he said, that we hangmen know to ease the trap when the trap springs slow. And so we ceased and asked no more as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And day by day 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 crossbeam looking down cast its shadow across the town. Then through the town the hangman came and called in the empty streets my name.
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall and thought there is no one left at all for hanging. So he calls to me to help pull down the gallows tree. And 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 the yellow twist of the hemp and strand. He whistled a 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 gallows were built for other men. I am no henchman of yours, I CRIED. YOU LIED TO ME, HANGMAN.
Fouly lied. And a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye. Lied to you?
Tricked you, he said. Not I, for I answered straight and I told you true. This scaffold was built for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully than you with your coward's hope, said he. And where are the others that might have stood side by your side in the common good? Dead, I whispered, and cordially.
Murdered, the hangman corrected me. First the alien, then the Jew. I did no more than you let me do.
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky, none had stood more alone than I. And the hangman strapped me and no voice there cried out for me in the empty square.
