True Love

 By Robert Penn Warren 


In silence the heart raves.  It utters words                      
Meaningless, that never had                                       
A meaning.  I was ten, skinny, red-headed,                        
                                                                  
Freckled.  In a big black Buick,                                  
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat                
In front of the drugstore, sipping something                      
                                                                  
Through a straw. There is nothing like                            
Beauty. It stops your heart.  It                                  
Thickens your blood.  It stops your breath.  It                   
                                                                  
Makes you feel dirty.  You need a hot bath.                       
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.                   
I thought I would die if she saw me.                              
                                                                  
How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?         
Two years later she smiled at me.  She                            
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.                    
                                                                  
Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee                      
Swagger of horsemen.  They were slick-faced.                      
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.                        
                                                                  
Their father was what is called a drunkard.                       
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor                      
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.
                                                                  
He never came down.  They brought everything up to him.           
I did not know what a mortgage was.                               
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.                 
                                                                  
When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing      
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.                    
The sons propped him.  I saw the wedding.  There were             
                                                                  
Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable.  I thought           
I would cry.  I lay in bed that night                             
And wondered if she'd cry about the things she'd miss.            

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.        
She never came back.  The family                                  
Sort of drifted off.  Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.     
                                                                  
But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives                    
In a beautiful house, far away.                                   
She called my name once.  I didn't even know she knew it.         

Copyright © 1985 by Robert Penn Warren