I DID not know my neighbour. Two back yards
And an alley were the gulf that lay between us.
His face across the gulf I had not seen;
Only his lighted windows sent toward
My window all his wonted ways of living,
Dull, as they seemed; perhaps a little mean.
He was no more to me than shapes that give
A shadowy human fringe to thought's existence;
He could have died and I should not have missed
More than his movements, vague and fugitive.
Then came the crashing horror of his fate.
He had walked there with passions in him burning
Such as made Oedipus of the gods learn
To count no man, till death, as fortunate;
He had grown plants within his kitchen garden
While tragedy grew in him desolate:
Grew till his strength no longer could retard
The twining of the tendrils that wound fiery
About his heart — the tendrils of desire:
Wherefore he sought his mistress passion-scarred.
They met in a drab rendezvous of sin
As was their wont whenever jealous frenzy
Drove him to think her false to him. And when
She flung denial he told her she had been
For the last time a lure and should no longer
Be let to live and snare the lust of men.
And so, though her eyes pled against the wrong,
He kissed her, cursed her, shot her — and sore weeping,
Himself: meaning to put all sin to sleep
Past any pain's distress, however strong.
But in this too he failed! — For even as she
Did death prove but a weak perfidious wanton,
Turning the bullet from his brain aslant
Into his eyes, that nevermore shall see.
So doubly now in prison lies my neighbour,
In that of blindness and of felony.
Which ended what, you see, was like a play
For me — since two back yards and one small alley
Sufficed for a gulf, an infinite interval,
Between men made by God in the same way.