The 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."

I remember reading this poem by Robert Frost in middle school, and the saying 'good fences make good neighbors' came to my mind today as we were driving through my sister's neighborhood in Chennai.

Most, if not all houses, have tall stuccoed walls with guarded gates for the vehicles to pass through. Many of the gates are very ornate with curly q's and vines. These wrought iron gates, to look at them one would think 'how lovely and delicate', but in actuality, they are sometimes the only thing that prevents vendors and onlookers from inadvertently trespassing on your property.

Driving past houses and looking past the gate to the other side, I can't help but wonder who these people might be, where do they work, do they have families, are they foreigners like my sister's family trying to find their way in a different country, trying to make sense of the culture?

I then remind myself that my house also has a fence...not guarded of course, but one just the same.

When I get home, I will go and speak to my neighbors. They are, no doubt, better conversationalists than my fence.