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
(though 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 not 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.
by Denise Levertov
from Naked Poetry
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1969