...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, Mending Walls
Thoughts below -- this is about walling off Mexico.
Why do [walls] make good neighbors? Isn't it where there are cows?
Or terrorists? They haven't used this border.
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.
Remember the fingerprinting policy? And how Brazil ordered all Americans to be fingerprinted on entry, too? Who is walling whom in?
Give offense? I wonder who in our government evaluates that today.
...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.
This sounds like Yeats: What rough beast. Frost was no liberal in his time -- and I don't generally approve of guessing what the dead would say. But I am sure he would not like this "old-stone savage" government we have.
Frost would be a (cranky, perhaps occasionally troll-rated) Kossack.