Poetry Day - A private reason

So here is another bonus Auden, incase you don’t appreciate poems about poets. This is number eight of Twelve Songs. It reads a little sinister with its reference to wicked secrets, and the poet would seem to be mocking the urge to share them in places, but I let myself take ‘poetic license’ with poems and how I understand them. I don’t think everyone has ghastly wicked secrets in their closet, though to be sure we’re all sinners with corrupted motivations, but I read this as a reminder that there is always more than meets the eye, and that eventually people do actually like to tell their story (which is a different thing to telling someone else's story).

Twelve Songs

VIII

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,

The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;

Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,

Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,

Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh

There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up on the convent wall,

The scent of the elder bushes, and the sporting prints in the hall,

The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,

There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

W.H. Auden