She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems by Caroline Kennedy

vivid to me
    as it ever was: even more
    since my feeling for it is clearer:
    I know what it could do and could not do
    it is no longer
    the body of a god
    or anything with power over my life
    Next year it would have been 20 years
    and you are wastefully dead
    who might have made the leap
    we talked, too late, of making
    which I live now
    not as a leap
    but a succession of brief, amazing movements
    each one making possible the next

Letter from My Wife
    NAZIM HIKMET
    I
    want to die before you.
    Do you think the one who follows
    finds the one who went first?
    I don’t think so.
    It would be best to have me burned
    and put in a jar
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â over your fireplace.
    Make the jar
    clear glass,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â so you can watch me inside . . .
    You see my sacrifice:
    I give up being earth,
    I give up being a flower,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â just to stay near you.
    And I become dust
    to live with you.
    Then, when you die,
    you can come into my jar
    and we’ll live there together,
    your ashes with mine,
    until some dizzy bride
    or wayward grandson
    tosses us out . . .
    But
    by then
    we’ll be
    so mixed
    together
    that even at the dump our atoms
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â will fall side by side.
    We’ll dive into the earth together.
    And if one day a wild flower
    finds water and springs up from that piece of earth,
    its stem will have
    two blooms for sure:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â one will be you,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â the other me.
    I’m
    not about to die yet.
    I want to bear another child.
    I’m brimming with life.
    My blood is hot.
    I’m going to live a long, long time—
    and with you.
    Death doesn’t scare me,
    I just don’t find our funeral arrangements
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â too attractive.
    But everything could change
    before I die.
    Any chance you’ll get out of prison soon?
    Something inside me says:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Maybe.

To Paula in Late Spring
    W. S. MERWIN
    Let me imagine that we will come again
    when we want to and it will be spring
    we will be no older than we ever were
    the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud
    through which the morning slowly comes to itself
    and the ancient defenses against the dead
    will be done with and left to the dead at last
    the light will be as it is now in the garden
    that we have made here these years together
    of our long evenings and astonishment

A Farmer’s Calendar
    VIETNAMESE FOLK POEM
    The twelfth moon for potato growing,
    the first for beans, the second for eggplant.
    In the third, we break the land
    to plant rice in the fourth while the rains are strong.
    The man ploughs, the woman plants,
    and in the fifth: the harvest, and the gods are good—
    an acre yields five full baskets this year.
    I grind and pound the paddy, strew husks to cover the manure,
    and feed the hogs with bran.
    Next year, if the land is extravagant,
    I shall pay the taxes for you.
    In plenty or in want, there will still be you and me,
    always the two of us.
    Isn’t that better than always prospering, alone?

LOVE ITSELF
    L OVE POETRY IS the greatest poetry in the English language. Women have always been at its center. We are its inspiration, we are its readers, and increasingly, women are its authors. And how many men like to read poetry anyway?
    It’s hard to say anything new about something as all-encompassing,