The Secret

The poem centers on two girls who “discover / the secret of life” (Lines 1-2), or its meaning—a secret that the speaker-poet doesn’t know despite having written the poem in which the girls found it. The meaning of life is elusive: It is unknown to the speaker-poet, who cannot even identify the poem in question, and —“more than a week / later” (Lines 14-15)—has presumably been forgotten by the girls. But this fleeting quality is beneficial because the search and rediscovery that will lead the girls to finding the secret over and over again throughout their lives is more important than the profound truth they see in a particular line of poetry. The object of life is to keep finding meaning by living in the world and reading other pieces of literature, drawing out the secrets of “other / lines” (Lines 27-28) and “other / happenings” (Lines 29-30). As existence is multitudinous and diverse, the meaning inherently transcends restriction, and so the poem refuses to dictate a one-size-fits-all philosophy about the meaning of life.

However, the poem also carries within in an alternative reading. The last stanza carries a volta, or a thematic turn in the poem that transforms the meaning of what came before.