Dear Mr. and Mrs. Loving,
I can comprehend aloneness,
but your aloneness is too hard
for me. Never symbols, you were
just a name, just two persons
among the millions. Two persons
without defense.
Your helplessness faced force.
But obedience, endurance,
were the only choice, I guess.
There had to be anger, too,
some grudge in the obeying.
Later years, all the dust laid down,
your lives went on so quiet.
And so I’m left to wonder
what you cooked, and ate,
how you kept your house, where
you saved your money, worked.
I know that you had children,
a common having, as are long years
of widowhood and tending graves.
Now I’ve come to comprehend
your mystery, the final aloneness —
just the privacy of ordinary lives,
the equal, sometimes joyous,
hum-drum of us all —
coffee in the morning, toast,
fix the car, water the tomatoes,
grieve, complain about the heat —
all these accessories of love.
(It took me nine years to write this poem about Mr. and Mrs. Loving whose Supreme Court case ended any ban on marriages between persons of different races. I was and still am afraid of being presumptuous. But their love and the quiet of their lives was too strong a pull. It is surprising how dull the prose of the Court’s opinion is. Yet, like so much law, it uses the dry language of justice as a covering for beauty. And its effect was enormous: it allowed Mr. and Mrs. Loving to live their lives in peace. This poem will never be finished. I keep changing it and changing it in just little ways.)
Lawrence N. DiCostanzo