I thought: What is this world?
What is all this? And then I saw four letters
Staring at me from the label on a stranger’s coat,
Their back to me on the train.
T-O-M-S. And it grabbed me by the throat.
“Tom’s” suddenly flashed upon my brain.
The answer was simple, delicate and fine.
The world—everything thought, seen and felt—is mine.
Here is the secret to the whole world.
You couldn’t figure it out, my sweetest girl.
You couldn’t figure it out, psychiatrists and sages,
Priests and gurus, poets through the ages.
The transit authority stamps its “T”
On the sides of trains—and that’s me.
If the truth were announced, everyone would look.
I don’t want that. The secret is not found in a book,
Or in anyone’s mind; it’s not a crude matter of fame,
Because the truth of the world and the world are not the same.
It is the truth of all time, and it begins with a “t.”
I didn’t see it because I was too close to it—the truth is none other than me.
She—who I loved—was never able to see.
She told me that on two separate occasions the answer almost came,
While she was in a meditative revery,
But it was lost! She recounted this bitterly
While I, her lover, listened helplessly,
But now I laugh, for the truth is known—
She almost found the truth because she was profoundly alone
And nearest to the secret—the secret that she was the secret.
But poor blind thing! A searching—but not a great—soul—she lost it.
Though—profoundly timid—she never wrote poetry,
I knew she was a poet—it seemed obvious to me.
“Tom,” she would cry, in our ecstatic embraces,
“Tom! Tom! Tom!” Cried among kisses drenching our faces,
Love speaking my name, beautiful and sublime,
Reminding me! Reminding me! That life is—mine!
