Free The Last Execution by Jesper Wung-Sung Page B

verse occurs to the poet. He mumbles it out loud. To remember it better, taste it:
    â€œA town has many mouths to sate
    But only one man in a cape;
    Only one ax comes to bear,
    One head from its neck to pare.”
    A fly lands on the poet’s nose. Then it’s gone. He thinks: A messenger of joy—or horror. Of spring on its way, or the omen of a corpse—which it will tuck into soon! As the boy’s sentence is read, the poet thinks of all the horrendous sicknesses in this world. But when the executioner lifts the ax out of the sack, he is ready. I’m shaking , the poet thinks. He tunes his body to the world. What do you see? What do you feel? When the executioner braces his legs, raises his arms; now that he lets the ax fall.
    It is horrible! Quicker than a wink, the executioner severs head and neck. Blood pours out of the body like a Nordic waterfall! The head, however, rolls to the far edge of the scaffold, the staring eyes and yellow tongue are clear to see. No, the boy was not made of porcelain. And now there is a patent calm upon the faces of the sheriff’s family. You can see their thoughts rise up to their son with God in heaven, and down to the other in Hell, twisting in flames of eternal, tooth-splintering pain.
    Then the poet faints. He falls, and the children scream with laughter. The adults laugh too. The howl of pain shoots up from the base of his spine to the back of his head. He loses his notebook and pen, but finds them again in amongst legs and boots. The crowd gets him back on his feet.
    It is not the first time he feels like a foolish fowl. Thank goodness Johanna didn’t see me! he thinks. I wouldn’t get a moment’s sleep if she’d seen me!
    Tomorrow the poet will be on his way. He makes a resolution: First thing tomorrow morning I’ll look her up, that dear girl, and confess my feelings for her. If she feels the same, stay. If not, say adieu—and be away.
    When he sits in a hotel room somewhere in this world, he will write it all down and send it to her.
    Will she tremble and cry when she reads his words? Will she long for him when he is thousands of miles away? Or will he be forgotten? Will he be rubbed out from memory? Ah, who knows? To travel is to live!
    Now the final words of the letter come to him. The final verse:
    One town’s many mouths, a chorus fair,
    Whilst a head that still doth stare
    Rolls to the ground
    Without a sound.
    It’s not just about that executed boy. She will understand that.
    The poet sees it before him, as if he were sitting in the same room. He sees a figure reading a letter in a chair by the window. She looks out the window, hugging his words to her bosom.

T he boy has felt, and not felt, the hand that has taken hold of his hair.
    â€œMississippi.”
    The boy doesn’t know why, but he says it out loud. He tries to count them. He is not good at words, but he keeps trying, till he’s as sure, as sure can be: four. There are four s ’s in that meandering river. But there are also four i ’s. So there are just as many i ’s as there are s ’s; just as many men without heads, he thinks, and dives into the water. That’s how it feels when the hand pushes his head down onto the block: like diving headfirst into water.
    Now the executioner is swinging his ax, and the boy is executed on Gallows Hill; the movement is quick and resolute, the head is already severed from its body, but still it feels like the age of a mountain; the boy has taken note of all the people, not that he consciously wished to block them out—he makes a note of everything and everyone—but he fixes irrationally long on certain things: A mother, who has discovered a louse in her son’s hair, how she rakes through it, finds the louse, tries to squash it to death between her fingers; he hears shouting, many voices yelling, but one voice in particular stands out—it is loud and clear, a young man calling,