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The heat of hell surrounds comparison:
it is a neighbourhood phenomenon.
A man competes ill only with his neighbour;
and unaffected always is the stranger
who passes by, who watches from a distance:
that honor is the goad to their resistance,
who sees full well: no reconciliation
possible; only the humiliation
each one in fits brings down upon the other,
in claim and counter claim, to wax superior.
Each of us dwells within a neighbourhood
where strangers circle in a brotherhood;
and hell is living with your next-door neighbour
unless you treat him as you would a stranger. |
