Poem a week

I am memorizing one poem a week. And as I rightly expected rote isn't easy as once long ago.
I am only beginning to really discover poetry, my knowledge about poets was restricted to Yeats, Frost and Plath and such well known names. But there is so much exceptional poetry out there! I don't claim to exactly understand everything but there is a finesse in so many poems that is hard to do in fiction. The language so fine tuned, each and every word selected with immense care--it really is fantastic. I don't think I SHOULD EVER attempt poetry. 

So here is the first one in what I hope will be a thing. 

Power
BY Adrienne Rich
(Dream of a Common Language)

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.