LOVE MINUS ZERO (NO LIMIT) NO LIMIT IS ABOUT

THE KLAN AND MISCEGENATION

For years I thought there was some kind of high falutin’ message embedded in this poem and look what
it turned out to be. Dylan fell under the influence of a Nazi named Ray Gooch who he writes about in
Chronicles for the first time. The title can be roughly translated into “The Unvarnished Truth.”

My love (my truth) she speaks like silence (fails to convey its message) Without (unless it
has) ideals (existing as an archetype or pattern, especially as a Platonic idea or
perception: the ideal race) or violence (shootings, lynching, arson against African-
Americans) She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful (Consistent with truth or actuality) Yet
she’s true, (Conforming to the characteristics or criteria of a group or type; typical: a
true southerner) like ice, (Slang To kill; murder) like fire (The discharge of firearms:
heard the fire of a gun. People (politicians) carry (communicate; pass on) roses (a rosy
outlook on things) Make promises by the hours (make a long speeches saying that the
Blacks have promise) My love she laughs (my truth feels or expresses derision or
contempt) like the flowers (like the best representations of humanity have in the past)
Valentines can’t buy her (Communists, Reds can’t buy, accept my way of thinking.)

In the dime stores and bus stations (Woolworth’s where lunch counters were
segregated and on buses where Blacks had to sit in the back) People talk of situations
(whites discuss the racial unrest in America) Read books, repeat quotations (the civil
rights types read books like Another Country by James Baldwin and repeat quotations
(from Martin Luther King’s speeches) Draw conclusions on the wall (and tell everyone
what to think about the evil Jim Crow) Some speak of the future (the condition of blacks
at a later date) My love she speaks softly (my truth, my beliefs have to be concealed)
She knows there’s no success like failure (he hopes this desegregationist sentiment
disappears) And that failure’s no success at all (because it should not have been there in
the first place).

The cloak and dagger dangles (the white sheets and hoods and violence of the Klan offer
me an inducement or an enticement) Madams light the candles (respectable white
women, light in skin color make it worth the effort involved worth the candle, worth the
effort involved) In ceremonies of the horsemen (in cross burning by the night riding KKK)
Even the pawn must hold a grudge (even the average white man as in the Dylan song
Only a Pawn in Their Game has an interest in keeping the blacks away from his women)
Statues made of matchsticks (human beings of all races in a form where you can’t tell
one from another or genes) Crumble into one another (begin to intermarry and one race
begins to break down) My love winks (my truth is readily apparent), she does not bother
(it doesn’t bewilder him) She knows too much to argue (to put forth reasons for or
against something: argued for integration) or to judge sarcastic (if she knows too much
she is inclined to make judgments, especially moral or personal ones)

The bridge (building bridges to promote reconciliation or cooperation between hostile

groups or people) at midnight trembles (causes a white and a black to have sex and
vibrate) The country doctor rambles (and the white woman becomes pregnant) Bankers’
nieces seek perfection (white women think they are doing the politically correct thing)
Expecting all the gifts (A talent, endowment, aptitude, or inclination) that wise men
bring (sarcastic that dumb blacks bring) The wind Something that disrupts or destroys:
the winds of war) howls (a loud derisive call) like a hammer (over and over again or the
judicial system, the Warren Court) The night blows cold and rainy (things look ominous)
My love she’s like some raven (Black and shiny: raven tresses. My truth is like some
black man) At my window (in my thoughts) with a broken (imperfect or incomplete;
fragmentary) wing (a group affiliated with or subordinate to an older or larger group, a
more primitive human being).