SUPPOSING I say: dogs are my neighbours
I will love dogs as
myself!
Then gradually I approximate to the dogs,
wriggle and wag and slaver, and
get the mentality of a dog!
This I call a shocking
humiliation.
The same with my robot neighbours.
If I try loving them, I fall
into their robot jig-jig-jig
their robot cachinnation comes rattling out of
my throat —
and I had better even have approximated to the
dog.
Who then, O Jesus, is my neighbour?
If you point me to that fat
money-smelling man in a motor-car,
or that hard-boiled young woman beside
him
I shall have to
refuse entirely to accept either of them.
My neighbour is not the man in the street, and never
was:
he jigs along
in the imbecile cruelty of the machine
and is implacable.
My neighbour, O my neighbour!
Occasionally I see him, silent,
a little wondering
with his ears pricked and his body wincing
threading his way among the
robot machine-people.
0
O
my neighbour
sometimes I see her, like a flower, nodding her way and
shrinking
from the
robot contact on every hand!
How can that be my neighbour
which I shrink
from!