Tuesday, December 25, 2018

The Secret


Tabiir by Neha 
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

No comments: