#1148 - I grew up in a secret

 

1148

22.ii.23

4.53

I grew up in a secret

 

that’s how I was raised

 

it’s common

I could say everyone did

but secrets come in different sizes

 

some little white larger than life

 

there cannot be examples

but let’s just instance

 

this secret of who, of how

 

a stubbornness not telling say

itself a kind of truth

and keep it

nor by the book

but write our own

 

this dark of place

it was to doom

 

some have called the secret a lie

who are we here so far?

 

will you guess?

like sphinx I’ll be

 

it was the valley glow

was beast to barn

 

I need not give a reason why

 

grew up there, still puzzle

 

joy of the smudge we do make

 

bright of eye

 

I was raised in the mist of unknowing

such the condition of creature

 

a death whiff but no

 

it was a dark woods midst

this little ending breathless

inch nearest to the heart

 

tortures tried to get from me

but I, brocaded

 

the hanging, the water, the fire

to stretch

to squeeze

cast out to starve

 

all secret now

it’s all of it a long way down

 

hid, like priest hole

in gallery of portraits, pith

 

invisible to ink it

 

how we hauled the monument

and caught the rain its fall

 

then then

 

I tune my secret for these times

 

is how one might have survived

they didn’t of course but we did

 

such duties to a secret

as worship silence there

keep mum

else

see all round you

these whom you might have been

so are

 

it is beautiful

to paint by tongue the worlds that were

thus tell what could

go on

‘go on’, they say

 

but must I be the keeper?

 

it’s knowing this

how I’d make myself

an everyday invention

a footing equally

 

and guess my way to make a home

and pass the secret on

 

no, I’m not telling now