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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov was born in Ilford, Essex, England, on October 24, 1923. She went on to publish more than twenty volumes of poetry, four books of prose, and translated three volumes of poetry...
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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.



By Denise Levertov, from Poems 1960-1967. Copyrightt © 1966, 1964 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
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