I've been wondering about that. Did the Great
Wall of China make good. neighbors? Did the Maginot
Line in France-a sort of inverted wall, built down instead
of up-make good neighbors? Did the Berlin Wall make
good neighbors? '
Then I've been wondering about my own wall.
You see, I live in Cherokee Gardens-a beautiful place
where it would be highly improper to build a wall of brick
or stone. So we build walls of tall, green, flowering shrubs.
Gives us "privacy," you know. I can relax outdoors in the
warm sun and read or write books without the distraction
of seeing children at play or their little puppy dogs trotting
from somewhere to nowhere, and back again.
Of course I can hear the children's voices and
laughter-but I never quite find out who gets to be Batman
and who is Robin. And I can't see where Hunter (that's
a dog) hides the bones I put outside my wall for him.
So, Mr. Frost, I can understand why, in your
poem, you couldn't quite agree with your neighbor who
firmly insisted, "Good fences make good neighbors." With
you, I wonder do they?
Then, Mr. Frost, there is that poem you wrote
about the "two roads" which "diverged in a yellow
woo d" ...
Being only "one traveler, long you stood and
looked down each as far as you could"... then you took
one-as each of us must when we are so often faced in Life
with the choice between two roads, knowing, as you did,
that "we shall never come back."