David BolesAn Answer to Auden: The Truth About Love, 1937 to 2026
In 1937, W. H. Auden published “O Tell Me the Truth About Love” inside a sequence called Twelve Songs. The poem is a list of comic guesses about what love might look like, smell like, sound like, do. Each refrain stanza ends in the same plea: tell me. The song is a young man’s question asked across a noisy room, hoping someone older will answer.
What strikes me about Auden’s poem is that it never gets the answer. The poem ends with another question. That refusal to answer is honest in 1937, when Europe was breaking and a man’s love could not yet be named in his own newspapers. But eighty-nine years later, with a long marriage in the rearview and a mother and father in the ground, the silence has paid its rent. It is time to answer Auden back.
The reply-poem is a long English tradition. Christopher Marlowe’s shepherd offered roses; Walter Raleigh’s nymph counted the days. The form requires that the answer use the asker’s structure as scaffolding, then build something the asker did not see. What follows uses Auden’s 1937 architecture exactly: seven stanzas of eight lines, alternating narrative and refrain, the same rhyme scheme, the same line counts. The walls match. The interior is mine.
I’ll Tell You the Truth About Love
after W. H. Auden
I
They said that love would find me late,
And said it finds you young,
They said it’s how a kitchen sounds
When supper has been sung,
The grocer paused above the till,
A driver shook his head,
The neighbor at the laundromat
Pretended he was dead.
II
It is patient as kettles still humming,
And as warm as the day before snow,
It is faithful as winter still coming,
And as slow as the calluses grow,
It is heavy as wood in the weather,
And as old as the beams up above,
It will hold the long marriage together,
And I’ll tell you the truth about love.
III
You’ll find it in a folded shirt
Your father saved for years,
You’ll find it tucked behind the books
That outlived all your fears,
It’s printed on the bottom of
The mug you cannot break,
It hums in radiators when
The first long winters wake.
IV
It will wake you with grief in the morning,
And it leaves like a guest on its way,
It will come without notice or warning,
And it stays until nothing’s to say,
It is stubborn as paint on the railing,
And as weighty as joists up above,
It will linger when everything’s failing,
And I’ll tell you the truth about love.
V
I searched the church on Christopher,
It wasn’t standing watch;
I drove the loop around the bay,
And studied every notch;
I don’t know what the river held,
Or what the streetlamp swore,
It wasn’t on the diner’s plate,
Or near the kitchen door.
VI
It is patient as wood in the ember,
And as warm as the dog at your feet,
It is older than time can remember
That you walked off alone in the street,
It is steady when houses grow shaken,
And as quiet as snow from above,
It can speak all the names that are taken,
And I’ll tell you the truth about love.
VII
It will come like a sweater you’re weaving,
From the wool of the years that have flown,
It arrives in the room you are leaving,
With the look of a face you have known,
It will hold what no science can steady,
And remain when the weather is rough,
It will stay when your friends are not ready,
And I’ll tell you the truth about love.
Auden asked because he was thirty and unsure. I answer because I am sixty-one and have watched what stays. The thing we keep asking the truth about, we keep asking because we are afraid the answer will be small. It is small. The answer is the kettle, the calluses, the room you are leaving. What it wears is a sweater you are still weaving. Auden left his question open in 1937. I close mine in 2026.
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