The Loveless Arms

The Loveless Arms

 

Or The Heart of Earth

 

Written in Recollection of a Boy Who Was

Verbally Abused in a British Literature Class

And Was That Winter Pronounced DOA

At the Orange County Trauma Center.

 

-P-

 

The street lights droop

Like loveless arms

Along the avenue

 

And you have slipped

Their cold embrace,

 

As you have cause to do

 

Your form is like

A blade of ice

 

That cuts into the night

 

And splits the frigid

Heart of Earth

 

Like some unholy rite

 

Your steps fly out into the void

But groan beneath your feet,

 

And snowflakes fly about your face

And mock your sad retreat

 

 

Your bitter, slighted egress goes

Without a reason known 

 

Yet in this season’s rout of love,

Your heart remains his own!

 

Oh, slight, dear boy,

Young walker sad,

 

Your secret God will keep,

 

Beyond the droop of loveless arms,

Where you forever sleep[1]

 

---

 

“Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit,

For Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

---

[1] Occasionally, a student dies. It is a reality that most high school teachers face. Paris once had twin sisters in a senior English class who excelled in the study of Hamlet. One evening, the firstborn committed suicide in the family garage. No one seemed to know why - But the theory was that she was an extreme perfectionist who solved problems as they came up �" No exceptions! And no pointless delays!

 

The young walker in “The Heart of Earth” was a charming but super-unhappy kid who seemed overwhelmed by the cacophony of physical existence. Paris said that the last time he saw this boy in British literature class, he reprimanded him for giggling during a lecture. The boy said that he was giggling because he thought Paris was funny. That evening, the boy was killed in a freak accident on a local highway. The poem derives from Paris having noticed the boy walking home in a snowstorm earlier that winter.