What Are You Being Asked?

I see without glasses now (both literally and figuratively), so when I reread Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “Muslin,” it hit differently than the first time I encountered it, maybe about a year ago. The poet’s words lead me to notice new details and to ask new questions. Now my eyes focus on ideas about what we give up, why we do it, the unintended consequences that often follow, and who asks us for such sacrifices. How about the logical conclusion? I mean, what—exactly—happens when you give and give and give until there’s nothing left? Are you playing the victim? Are you being asked to? What are you modeling for others? And whatever’s really going on, are you being honest with yourself about it?

“Muslin,” by Jane Hirshfield, published in Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001, HarperCollins):

“I never knew when he would come,”
my friend said of her lover,
“though often it was late in the afternoon.”

Behind her back the first plum blossoms
had started to open,
few as the stars that salt the earliest dusk.

“Finally weeks would go by, then months,”
she added, “but always I let him in.
It made me strong, you see,

“the gradual going without him.
I think it taught me a kind of surrender,
though of course I hated it too.”

Why he would appear or stay away
she never fathomed—
“I couldn’t ask. And that also seemed only good.”

A small bird fluttered silent behind her left shoulder,
then settled on some hidden branch.
“Do you ask the weather why it comes or goes?”

She was lovely, my friend, even the gray
of her hair was lovely. A listening rope-twist
half pity, half envy tightened its length in my chest.

“When he came, you see, I could trust
that was what he wanted.
What I wanted never mattered at all.”

The hands on her lap seemed quiet,
even contented.
I noticed something unspoken begin to

billow and shimmer between us,
weightless as muslin,
but neither of us moved to lift it away.