Political Engagement

The Need is clear for all who see
Speak up now or forever hold your peace:

Poems First They Came (Martin Niemoller) and The Hangman (Maurice Ogden)

First They Came

by Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialist

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

[Note that there are no enjambments, and the substance of each line follows a very clear pattern as if political passivity led inexorably to the jaws of his demise]

The Hangman

by Maurice Ogden

1.
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;
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 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 raise 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 on 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.
2.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town
And stark and black in the morning air,
The gallows-tree on 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 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 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!" 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.
3.
The third he took-we had all heard tell
Was a user and infidel, and
"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 out 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 last?" 
"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.
4.
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." And 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
Was the yellow twist of the 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 that might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?,"
"Dead," I whispered, and sadly 
"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 so alone as I
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
Cried "Stay!" for me in the empty square

Note how the Hangman is deified with a capitalised "He", as if god-like, an impression reinforced by the metaphor of the gallows as a tree with possible allusion to the Christian Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The unbridled hangman eventually exceeded the framework of justice (represented by the doorway) - but no one stopped Him: "I did no more than you let me do"...

"The only thing necessary for evil to exist is for good men to do nothing"

- Edmund Burke

[picture from http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/1920s/HitlerSaltuesArmy.jpg]