The Poetry of Walls: Donald Trump and Robert Forst

The Troubadour Podcast

Robert Frost and Donald Trump would have been great friends. They have so much in common: They were both born in big American cities, both have wide appeal in rural America and both speak with poetic fervor about walls. “I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me… I will build a great, great wall on our southern border…mark my words,” said President Trump. Indeed, Robert Frost, too, has marked some words about walls in his poem, Mending Wall, which tells the story of two neighbors fixing the gaps in the walls which separate their property.

Trump and Frost are truly kindred spirits, for both also have a love of proverbs. Many of Frost’s’ phrases have made it into the American vernacular, and Trump is more than happy to use the phrases passed down to him. In his love poem about walls, Frost coined the saying: “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors;” recently Trump eloquently quoted his father’s saying: “a nation without borders is not a nation.” Indeed, Mr. Trump and Mr. Frost must be soulmates.

Unlike Frost, the President will not merely speak of building a wall; he’ll do it. “Mark my words,” he states. Don’t discount words too fast, however. There’s power in words as there’s power in building walls. In Frost’s’ realm, he waxes poetical on the beauty of walls: “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.”

Who doesn’t love a wall? That makes boulders spill like milk in the sun, and that pushes the earth beneath like two barefooted lovers walking on damp grass. The very existence of a wall stresses our togetherness. Take a moment to picture two people walking in an open field. One wanders over here by the thrush and another over there by a boulder; this separation is not possible when they approach a wall. They must find the gap and then “two can pass abreast.”

Despite criticisms of President Trump, his intentions are pure. “We are going to stabilize on both sides of the border and we also understand that a strong and healthy economy in Mexico is very good for the United States,” he said upon his Presidential announcement to build a wall. “Today, America get’s back control of its borders.” Indeed!

Frost would nod gravely in agreement. “The work of hunters is another thing,” he would add. Referring to the heartache of mending his wall season after season, due to jackals and beasts of all sorts, he says “I have come after them and made repair where 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.” As Trump emphasizes many times, the days of cartels “wreaking havoc in our country is over. We are going to get them out and we are going to get them out fast.” How poetic, indeed!

Again Robby Frost would nod sagely and add to his buddy’s assessment. Walls also bring neighbors together. Trump’s wall, after all, will need repairing from time to time. And so our two nations must come together every spring mending time to repair it. When these gaps are found, perhaps the nation to our south will act as Frost does: “I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; and on a day we meet to walk the line and set the wall between us as we go.” Trump, in fact, may not be willing to go so far as his friend Frost here. For, to Frost, this mending of the walls is a “kind of a game” played by neighbors. Oh isn’t that fun? Indeed:

“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