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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

over your fireplace.

Make the jar

clear glass,

so you can watch me inside . . .

You see my sacrifice:

I give up being earth,

I give up being a flower,

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

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:

one will be you,

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

too attractive.

But everything could change

before I die.

Any chance you’ll get out of prison soon?

Something inside me says:

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

LOVE 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, as infinite, complex, and mysterious, as intricate and detailed, as abstract and powerful as love. Many of these poems will be familiar. The most famous among them have entered our subconscious and help define how our society thinks about love. Less well-known poems bring new insight and metaphor. There are a few things more pleasurable than reading love poetry. I think you can guess what they are, but until then, I hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as I do.

A Birthday

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

My heart is like an appletree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

June Light

RICHARD WILBUR

Your voice, with clear location of June days,

Called me—outside the window. You were there,

Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare

Of uncontested summer all things