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.
~"Secret of Life" by Diana Der-Hovanessian, from Selected Poems of Diana Der-Hovanessian. © Sheep Meadow Press, 1994.
BBC Scotland is doing a 1993 retrospective, and they played Arrested Development's "Mr. Wendell," which I'd only heard blearily during those days... but the words tie together with this poem so well. Hunger makes an open hand, life is in the details - small coins, what we lose, what we love. We have less wisdom and polish than we think, and yet the secret to everything is much smaller... moments and circumstance. I like that.
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