orichalcum

Passing poems along, with commentary...

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
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 offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."  --Robert Frost, "The Mending Wall."

This doesn't mean to me what it did the last time I quoted it, some years ago. Then it was an appeal to a friend not to shut me out, to let me help in a time of need as best I could. I don't know if anyone ever understood the message. Now...it has political resonance, like practically everything these days. It also reminds me not to wall people out in my time of need. It reminds me of the power of "elves," and of the need not to move in darkness, to be aware, and open, to change and to possibilities.