*Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the 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 boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'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 pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
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 offence.
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."
Mending Wall has been one of my favorite poems, highlighting the traditional mindset of people and nations. Take a glance at the current situation around us! The adage good fences make good neighbors doesn't hold true now. Even if the fence or the wall or the LOC (line of control) is strong and solid, the mindset behind it is retrograde. Battles are to be fought in the economic arena, not in the battle field. The incidents of incursions and attacks on heads of states, diplomats or embassies add to the crisis in the country and not to global peace. Where is the global citizen minding and mending his fence/wall so as to ensure a quality of relationship as well as individuality between them; looking at all times to assimilate into the surrounding culture? Where is the global country coming together in war and peace with the common enemy poverty, unemployment and technological backwardness? Where is the will to mend it and mind it; to keep good neighborly relationships alive? Wall between such countries should be only a symbolic one.
Even if we deplore a person's preoccupation with mending the wall, his ideas about what makes a good neighbor differ. Be it the idea of a home, a property or a country; what makes a good neighbor? One who minds his own business or one who minds your business? Is it one who pettifogs, who provokes quarrel with petty matters or one who is always on a hostile mode? In terms of the poem, even nature does not approve of building a wall and keeps tumbling it down. Good neighbors keep mending it. They do so because they are conditioned to do so. They never take the trouble to question the validity of the belief- ‘good fences make good neighbors’; nor do they change their mind set and accept progressive thoughts. Even when nature continues to destroy barriers that man builds up, man continues to build barriers out of habit and tradition.
Nonetheless, men or nations are not happy with the walls or the LOC between them. Skirmishes break out; innocent people or soldiers are killed. Politicians debate, analyze and issue statements. Denials fly thick and fast between governments and countries. In the melee, media make TRP while the sun shines and social cast-offs like Maoists have a field day, devising innovative booby traps to kill people. Having a fence/wall itself becomes a reason for concern.
How does a common man’s life change? Does he worry about the wall breached or the penalty meted out to the others? He is busy swimming against the tide and staying aloft with different challenges vying for his attention: petrol/diesel hike one day, bank interest rates rising another day, veg and milk rates spiraling next day or the ceiling on gas cylinders the day after the next. When hard hitting cost burns a hole in his pocket, his brain suffers a seizure. He cannot think beyond the now and the next. Even if he were to mend fences with his neighbors, it is only for a short while. In the dog-eat-dog scenario around him, he cannot afford to be soft and yielding. Ultimately, individuality as men or as nations depends on their maintaining that wall or LOC between them. Notion of chivalry to nations and people is an archaic concept now.
*Mending Wall published in 1914 is Robert Frost’s (1874–1963) poem, in
Frost's second collection of poetry, North of Boston. It is set in the
countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must
rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring.The neighbor rebuilds
the wall without question, But Frost's narrator questions the proverb, noting,
"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."
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