Warren’s ‘A Way to Love God’

By Scott Horton

Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.

And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific

First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know

About submarine geography, and your father’s death rattle

Provides all biographical data required for the Who’s Who of the dead.

I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least

I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and

Heard mountains moan in their sleep.By daylight,

They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions

Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night

They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.

So moan.Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that

Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.

I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you

To think on the slug’s white belly, how sick-slick and soft,

On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence

Blows like wind by, and on the sea’s virgin bosom unveiled

To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,

In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,

Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

Finish reading ‘A Way to Love God’ at Poemhunter

–Robert Penn Warren, A Way to Love God in: Can I see Arcturus From Where I Stand? (1975)