RUNDELANIA

 

Building Wall

By Enrique Niepo

(translated from the Spanish by Jacob Yaple)

 

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the Democrats to undermine it,

And stalls all executive orders in the House;

And spots gaps in logic even two can pass abreast.

The work of ICE is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one water jug unturned,

And they would have the illegals out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The progress he’s made,

No one has seen it made or heard it made,

But at spring building-time he says they’re ready.

My neighbour comes from Capitol Hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the citizens that have fallen to each.

And some love us and some so nearly hate

We have to use a spell to make them behave:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all ignorant rednecks and I am bad hombres.

My people will never get across

And become burdens on his taxpayers, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make America great again.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make America great again? Isn’t it

Where there are terrorists? But here there are no terrorists.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.” I could say “the American people” to him,

But it’s not them only, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing about a government shutdown

To force the hand of the House Democrats.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of lies only and the shade of corruption.

He will stand behind his campaign promise,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make America great again.”