The Secret

The First of Five Sonnets from Rachel Hadas

I asked Rachel Hadas for a sonnet; she sent me five. I loved them all and realized that she had presented a sonnet sequence in miniature. And so, The Sonnneteer will publish one a week, starting with “The Secret.” But first, some words from our author:

The sonnets that will be appearing in the coming weeks weren’t conceived as a sequence. Encouraged by Ken Gordon’s enthusiasm to take a look at some of my unpublished shorter poems, I speedily found one fourteen-liner, “Tectonic Plates.” Three other poems were so close to sonnet length that they almost begged to be tweaked or tightened or gently expanded; this group includes “Out of Reach,” “Winter,” and “My Best Friend’s Mother.” In every case, the sonnetification (Ken’s helpful coinage) improved the poem. The process of sonnetifying “The Secret” was different. Here the invitation to contribute to The Sonneteer provided a well-timed opportunity to transform an open-ended, leisurely, and rather limp set of reflections into something brisker and more succinct. The images of the awning and the secret arrived uninvited somewhere in the process of this transformation. I’m very grateful to Ken and The Sonneteer for this benign nudge—and of course I now realize that, while not conceived as a sequence, all five of these sonnets (now that they are all sonnets) do share themes. They’re about time and memory, aging and loss, what we lose and what we retain. So are many other sonnets, infinitely greater than mine. It’s a privilege to be able to join in the conversation, to swell the chorus.

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As if under an awning, there they lean
together, shadowed by the loom of time,
my father and my mother. Do they see
me? Their gazes seem to turn my way,
then slide beyond me to some farther shore.
To them I’m blurry, but to me they’re clear.

There is no denying anymore
I too now find myself chilled by that shade
which canopies the aging and the dead.
Huddled under its expansive spread,
grouped in little clusters as we stand,
what is it that we pass from hand to hand?
The compact cargo of what we all knew
but never spoke of, secret until now.

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Seated Couple, “Barnes Foundation Master,” 18th–early 19th century

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