Friday, July 15, 2011

Poetry Friday

It's been a long time since I posted a poem to the blog. I've been missing Poetry Fridays. And since my last post was so rambling and incoherent, I figured I would share a very beautiful and sparse little poem that touches me every time I read it. I read poetry and books and discover the secret on a regular basis. But I always forget.

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.

2 comments:

fumiko said...

My English is not good enough to understand the real meaning of poems,when I read them helf my imagination,so I tried to find her book in Japanese,the only book of hers tlanlated in Japanese is "The Jacob′s ladder" I put my booklist to read!

Cat B said...

Fumiko,

Don't worry. Poetry is tough in any language. There are plenty of poems in English that I don't understand. I'll see if I can find a copy in Japanese for you. I'd try to translate but my kanji is a bit rusty. That's what twenty years away will do. :-)