"O Tell Me the Truth about Love"

Something stirred in me, creaky from years of disuse (the group of little urban hipsters were watching a movie) and I found myself brimming over with all sorts of untrammelled emotions while watching The Princess and the Frog, the last olden-style 2-D Disney movie that made me feel anything more than momentary pleasure.

G-rated?—spine-chilling stuff goes on.  And the characters and settings, how did THEY sneak past the PC sensors?

Back to Disney I must have been disarmed by the sudden familiarity of it all, even if there were modern touches like the Most Awesome Disney Princess Ever and nods to Miyazaki (those creepy shadow followers, surely) and Pixar (thank God for John Lasseter). I was transported back to a time when, to paraphrase the movie, dreams could be as wild as I could make them, and all I had to do was work my darnedest. But then I never did dare to dream too crazily. 

However, it did make me remember the first poem my English teacher brought to poetry class…

O Tell Me the Truth About Love…

 

Some say that love's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,



Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that's absurd,

And when I asked the man next-door,

Who looked as if he knew,

His wife got very cross indeed,

And said it wouldn't do.

 . . .

 

Our history books refer to it

In cryptic little notes,

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats;

I've found the subject mentioned in

Accounts of suicides,

And even seen it scribbled on

The backs of railway-guides.

. . .

 

I looked inside the summer-house;

it wasn't ever there:

I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,

And Brighton's bracing air.

I don't know what the blackbird sang,

Or what the tulip said;

But it wasn't in the chicken-run,

Or underneath the bed.

. . .

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my shoes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

~W.H. Auden