Marilyn Hacker: Nearly A Valediction

Nearly A Valediction

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.

In this poem  I found that nearly every line consisted of ten syllables, nearly. Of course, there are breaks in this pattern and they are used to change the tone of the poem or escalate an emotional phrase. The first break in this pattern occurs in the first stanza when the poem reads: "dozer, like the van that missed my skull". Here, the line is filled with nine syllables as compared to the surrounding lines composed of ten. Because the reader has  found the ten-syallable rhythm prior to reading this line, a slight pause in inserted after the word "skull" . It seemed like there was a need to fill the gap. "like the van that missed my skull" is a really powerful and visual phrase and that added pause works to further illustrate this portrait inside your head. It furthers the tone of loss of control in the stanza.
In the second stanza, "The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me" is an eleven-syallable break from the ten-syllable pattern. The emotional tone of this complete thought stands out in the stanza as a result. The line is a complete thought, a full sentence, and it feels like something that you would throw at someone if you were in an argument, something that you would just blurt out...and this is how it comes across in the poem. It's a break, of some kind of emotion anger and passion. And then, the stanza returns to it's ten-syllable pattern.