CABLE STREET (formerly WITTY PARTITION)

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    • About Us
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    • Contact
    • Submissions
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    • LINKS
  • ISSUE 18: Cable St.
    • Table of Contents
    • A WORD
    • InSight Visitor
    • COLLOQUY >
      • Interview: Nandana Dev Sen
      • Poems: Nabaneeta Dev Sen
      • Read, See, Hear More
    • POETRY >
      • Trish Crapo
      • Kelly Egan
      • Michael Franco
    • TRANSLATION >
      • INTRODUCTION: Babel
      • Translation-and-Tradition
    • DRUMMINGS >
      • Djembe
    • Christina Lago
    • Editors' Pocket Anthology >
      • Our Reflections
    • Insight2 Seasonal
    • Troublemaker
    • MEMOIR-18
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Nuran Akkaya
    • Ngugi
    • Vintage Amphora
    • ¡VIVA! >
      • Peter Brook
      • A FLOCK
    • SOUNDINGS >
      • Jimi Zhivago
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • Paul Mugur
      • Brandon Rushton
      • Marcela Sulak
    • COLOPHON
    • Contributors18
  • ISSUE 17
    • Table of Contents
    • A WORD17
    • InSight 1
    • Flash Pocket >
      • Flash fiction intro
      • Susanna Drbal
      • Melanie Bush
      • Matt Gordon
    • POETRY >
      • G. Greene
      • Norman Fischer
      • David Robertson
      • Lisa Bourbeau
    • Essays >
      • THE BARD-
      • LORCA IN CUBA
    • Ad Astra >
      • Beatrix Gates
    • Romanian Pocket >
      • Seven Romanians
    • URBAN LEGENDS >
      • Randolph Petsche
    • CANONIZATION >
      • Steve Cannon
    • Soundings >
      • Cheb Khaled
    • MEMOIR-17
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Couteau and David
    • Ngugi
    • Vintage InSight
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • NOSTALGIA
      • ROTURA
      • Tiller of Waters
      • Sentsov
    • SUMMER READS >
      • Ninso John High
      • Rimbaud
      • Kaminsky
    • COLOPHON
    • Contributors17
  • Back Issues
  • EXTRA!

COLOPHON

Picture

Wall on Robert Frost's farm,
Derry, NH. Wikipedia



We have made mention of many a wall, as barrier.
As an, albeit cruel, pun. As a place through which
to commune and exchange.  Once in a while,
some wag will quote a snippet of the well-known
poem by New England poet, Robert Frost.

Imagine sharing the care of a wall with one's
neighbors....

MENDING WALL

Robert Frost

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 neighbour 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 neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? 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 neighbours.
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 neighbour 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 neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? 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 neighbours.

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