The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost writes this poem around 1915, as a joke, as a farce for his friend William Thomas. A thorough analysis could tell your more than I can, hier for example.

There are supposedly a handful of interpretations, as always. And all directs you to the diversity of what Frost tried Not to say. Frost made just a joke, all of us took it seriously. That is Poetry. 

Apart from that, I found the poem dual und very ambiguous or better said multilayered, simply because it sees both the tree and the forest, the road and the destination. It swings between decisions and whims, intuition and regrets. 

All in all, I cannot say,  that it made a great impression on me. Robert Frost was, together with William Blake (although he is from a totally different Era, some two centuries ago!) and Charles Baudelaire, the first three of the worldwide known literates, that I had read in my youth. 

Of course Frost was mentioned several times in the film Dead Poets Society. Robin Williams refers to this poem, in the scene, where his pupils stroll around in different pace, rhythm and style.

I thought of it again, as I heard und read the book from Jø Nesbø, Jealousy, in german,of course. It is significant at the end of the story, where both heroes, the perpetrator and his hunter, seek the way out, the endpoint of their false decisions, trying to find again the road that was not taken. 

The poem was convenient placed at the timeline of the plot and I liked the idea, that Nesbø used a poem-joke to deepen in the character and their intrigues, let alone their fatal secrets. It alludes all of the atrocities we impose, just to find "who we are" and "why" we chose this specific road.

Life and the roads above und inside it are all jokes. Or  poems. Or both. It depends on the singularity, you are at this present moment.