Wednesday 6 June 2012

Justice: Chicago and Lockerbie

[The greatest poem written in English about justice is, in my view, Carl Hamblin, from Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.  It reads as follows:]

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked,
And I was tarred and feathered,
For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago:
“I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes
Standing on the steps of a marble temple.
Great multitudes passed in front of her,
Lifting their faces to her imploringly.
In her left hand she held a sword.
She was brandishing the sword,
Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer,
Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic.
In her right hand she held a scale;
Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed
By those who dodged the strokes of the sword.
A man in a black gown read from a manuscript:
'She is no respecter of persons.'
Then a youth wearing a red cap
Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage.
And lo, the lashes had been eaten away
From the oozy eye-lids;
The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus;
The madness of a dying soul
Was written on her face—
But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage.”

[Perhaps, one day, the multitude (and the Scottish Government) will recognise the affront to justice that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi constitutes.]

1 comment:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2012:
    Libya was really behind it ?
    Now published in Newspaper "Beobachter" on URL:

    http://www.beobachter.ch/justiz-behoerde/gesetze-recht/artikel/lockerbie_steckte-wirklich-libyen-dahinter/

    Text: Otto Hostettler
    Assistants: John Ashton
    Picture: AFP

    by Edwin and Mahanz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

    ReplyDelete