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."
[1] The poem was originally published under the title "Ballad of the Hangman" in Masses and Mainstream magazine under the pseudonym "Jack Denoya", before later being "[r]evised and retitled".
The poem is usually cited as an indictment of those who stand idly by while others commit grave evil or injustice, such as during the Holocaust.
The story it tells is very similar to that of the famous statement First they came... that has been attributed to the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller as early as 1946.