About Edward Mullany's If I Falter At The Gallows

Edward Mullany is a moralist. I’m not entirely sure what a moralist is and I’m resisting the urge to look it up, see what Wikipedia has to say on the subject, but still I’m pretty sure that’s what Edward is. He is telling us how to live. Yes, there, that’s it.

These are very grave poems, the ones printed in If I Falter At The Gallows, out by Publishing Genius this week. They don’t let us out, these poems. They give us these choices, “A black dot on a white wall…a white dot on a black wall,” and we are forced to choose between them. There’s no way to choose, of course, but Edward makes us anyway. He knows there’s no way to choose, it says so in the poems, but still.

I guess the question is, Is there something, at last, that we can do? Can we refuse to choose, and refuse to refuse to choose? Only if we exit the system altogether. Just if we negate the whole of “The Revisionist’s Song.” Only if there can be no empty parts VII And VIII in our world view.

Surely there are some who can, exit the system. I don’t know though, I don’t feel strong enough, or the poems are too strong. What loveliness.