Nearly A Valediction
by Marilyn Hacker
You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I’ve ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.
I don’t want to remember you as that
four o’clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.
While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days’ routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She’ll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn’t know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Divided Passion
- Федор Сологуб – Плачет безутешная вдова
- Bearhug by Michael Ondaatje
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- pissed-off cow by Raj Arumugam
- Robert Burns: The Lad They Ca’Jumpin John:
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- Владимир Высоцкий – В тюрьме Таганской нас стало мало
- 对于女权主义者
- Владимир Высоцкий – У Доски, где почётные граждане
- Robert Burns: Ah, Woe Is Me, My Mother Dear: Paraphrase of Jeremiah, 15th Chap., 10th verse
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Памяти Скрябина
- Высоцкий – Диалог у телевизора (Ой, Вань, смотри какие клоуны): текст стиха Владимира Высоцкого – Poetry Monster
- The Princess And The Goblins by Sylvia Plath
- Exposed On The Cliffs Of The Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
