Poetry You Still Like

Secret of Life

Once during the war
on a bus going to Portsmouth
a navy yard worker
told me the secret of life.

The secret of life, he said,
can never be passed down
one generation to the other.

The secret of life, he said,
is hunger. It makes an open hand.

The secret of life is money.
But only the small coins.

The secret of life, he said,
is love. You become what you lose.

The secret of life, he said,
is water. The world will end
in flood.

The secret of life, he said,
is circumstance.

If you catch the right bus
at the right time
you will sit next
to the secret teller

who will whisper it
in your ear.

(Diana Der-Hovanessian)

Edward Hirsch


Green Figs

I want to live like that little fig tree
that sprouted up at the beach last spring
and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit
(tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)
ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil was a fig tree, or so it is said,
but this wild figure was a wanton stray.

I need to live like that crooked tree—
solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free—
that knelt down in the hardest winds

but could not be blasted away.
It kept its eye on the far horizon
and brought honey out of the rock.

A Watcher

The mail doesn't come
and doesn't come.
The mail doesn't come.
It's three o'clock, I've been
downstairs to check, and up again,
and down and up — it
doesn't come.

Incognito in the little shops
is how I want to go.
And in and out
about the neighbourhood,
observing unobserved.

And yet I long, I long.
Long to be known, and know.

(Robyn Sarah)