Inspiration Poetic

I fell in love with a poem today. Actually, to be more accurate, I had the feeling the poem is describing, hence causing me to fall in love with it. In Denise Levertov's "The Secret," she describes the joy she experiences after hearing that two girls found a line she wrote meaningful to them. This makes her happy because if people are "finding the secret to life" in lines of poetry, it means they are looking for it. The poem has a very unique structure, almost stumbling; I think this is meant to echo the ecstasy she feels when writing; when contemplating how countless people are going to read, enjoy, forget and re-read her work over and over during the course of their lives. What a thought. In fact, I'm sure this isn't the first time I've read this poem, but I don't remember it having this effect on me before. I love how she asserts that she cannot know the meaning in her own lines that others see- kind of like a nod to reader's response. She also seems to emphasize that the poem isn't the important thing- but the greatness in life that it aims to describe or capture. Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? Ultimately, I think she talks about writing as a way of finding the secret to life; and I think she's glad she hasn't found it yet. All the more reason to keep looking.

My favorite line is: 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."

Poetry is sick, dude.
"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.