Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marilyn Hacker
Marilyn Hacker
Born in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, Marilyn Hacker ...
More >
FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Rime Riche
by Monica Ferrell
Other Sonnets
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
by Ted Berrigan
Acquainted with the Night
by Robert Frost
American Sonnet (10)
by Wanda Coleman
American Sonnet (35)
by Wanda Coleman
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
by Eavan Boland
Autumn
by Richard Garcia
Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
by William Wordsworth
Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
by John Donne
Discourse
by Forrest Hamer
Half-Hearted Sonnet
by Kim Addonizio
History
by Robert Lowell
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Mother Night
by James Weldon Johnson
My Letters! all dead paper... (Sonnet 28)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare
Oil & Steel
by Henri Cole
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)
by William Shakespeare
Shawl
by Albert Goldbarth
Silence
by Thomas Hood
Sonnet
by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Sonnet 1
by Gwendolyn Bennett
Sonnet 100
by Lord Brooke Fulke Greville
Sonnet 101 [Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find]
by Petrarch
Sonnet 131 [I'd sing of Love in such a novel fashion]
by Petrarch
Sonnet 6
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnet 8 [Set me where as the sun doth parch the green]
by Petrarch
Sonnet V
by Mahmoud Darwish
Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,]
by Karen Volkman
Sonnet—Silence
by Edgar Allan Poe
Testing Gardening
by Marie Ponsot
Today We Make the Poet's Words Our Own
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
by John Milton
Without Discussion
by Samuel Amadon
Adopt a Poet | Add to Notebook | E-mail to Friend | Print
Untitled [You did say, need me less and I'll want you more]  
by Marilyn Hacker

You did say, need me less and I'll want you more.
I'm still shellshocked at needing anyone,
used to being used to it on my own.
It won't be me out on the tiles till four-
thirty, while you're in bed, willing the door
open with your need. You wanted her then,
more. Because you need to, I woke alone
in what's not yet our room, strewn, though, with your
guitar, shoes, notebook, socks, trousers enjambed
with mine. Half the world was sleeping it off
in every other bed under my roof.
I wish I had a roof over my bed
to pull down on my head when I feel damned
by wanting you so much it looks like need.



Share Digg StumbleUpon Facebook E-mail to Friend



From Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (New York: Arbor House, 1986). Copyright © 1986 by Marilyn Hacker. Reprinted with the permission of Frances Collin Literary Agency. All rights reserved.
Smaller TypeSmaller Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2012 by Academy of American Poets.