I didn’t realize there were some people out there saying, “Good fences make good neighbors” unironically until today. Like the whole poem is the narrator talking about how he isn’t so sure if it’s true and his neighbor just repeating it. I mean, damn, it’s not even a subtext. Like this excerpt pretty heavy handedly says that maybe you shouldn’t build an arbitrary wall:
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 offense.
Sounds like the dollar store version of Ben Affleck, Bin Aflick.