A Mixture of Bruce Dawe

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/auth3.html
A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love
Bruce Dawe

Dear one, forgive my appearing before you like this,
in a two-piece track-suit, welder's goggles
and a green cloth cap like some gross bee—this is the State's ideaà
I would have come
arrayed like a bridegroom for these nuptials
knowing how often you have dreamed about this
moment of consummation in your cell.
If I must bind your arms now to your sides
with a leather strap and ask if you have anything to say
—these too are formalities I would dispense with:
I know your heart is too full at this moment
to say much and that the tranquilizer which I trust
you did not reject out of a stubborn pride
should by this time have eased your ache for speech, breath
and the other incidentals which distract us from our end.
Let us now walk a step. This noose
with which we're wed is something of an heirloom, the last three
members of our holy family were wed with it, the...