The Secret
by Denise Levertov
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.
