The Executioner's Lament

Nature dictates living and dead,
Decides who rules and who does not.
Those who slay for gain lose their head,
Their one death mark a red scarf knot.
The executioner who takes
Their heads, a tired sigh he makes.
He guides condemned by their cloth neck,
Subdued to follow call-and-beck.
Going into the cold white hills,
Resting the trunk on a spruce stump
He beheads the brute with a thump.
From the bare neck the hot blood spills.
Executioner says, “Alas,
Rotten blood does not feed the grass!”