The Secret

 

Two girls discover 
the secret of life 
in a sudden line of 
poetry.

I who don’t know the 
secret wrote 
the line. They 
told me

(through a third person) 
they had found it
but not what it was 
not even

what line it was. No doubt 
by now, more than a week 
later, they have forgotten 
the secret,

the line, the name of 
the poem. I love them 
for finding what 
I can’t find,

and for loving me 
for the line I wrote, 
and for forgetting it 
so that

a thousand times, till death 
finds them, they may 
discover it again, in other 
lines

in other 
happenings. And for 
wanting to know it, 
for

assuming there is 
such a secret, yes, 
for that 
most of all.

--Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo-American poet, daughter of a Russian-Jewish father who became an Anglican priest and a Welsh mother descended from Welsh mystics, convert to Roman Catholicism.