每逢周三、周六，小区会有车来搬运垃圾。一到周二、周五晚间，我们就把垃圾桶从车库拉到马路边。有时候垃圾倒了，我们没有及时将垃圾桶拉回车库里，邻居就会帮我们把垃圾桶从马路到车库门前。我们对周围邻居也会做同样的事。这样的好邻居，还需要筑墙吗？到美国来后，常听人说“好篱笆造出好邻家”*。（Good fences make good neighbors.）原以为是一句英文谚语，好像典出罗伯特·弗罗斯特（ROBERT FROST）《修墙》（Mending Wall）。
罗伯特·弗罗斯特在美国文学史上地位极高，是一位家喻户晓的人物。最早知道他是在出国前，课堂上学过他的《雪晚林边歇马》（Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening）。到美国来，又学过他的《未择之路》（The Road Not Taken）。他的诗，文字简明易懂，内容深含大意，富有哲理。
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 neighbor 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 neighbors.’ 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. 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.’
