Summary
In the fifth poem entitled "Matins" in the collection, the human speaker asks the reader a series of questions, and proceeds to answer them. The first question is "You want to know how I spend my time?" The speaker answers herself, stating that she walks the front lawn, "pretending / to be weeding." She tells the reader they ought to know that she is never weeding. Though she is situated outside on her knees, physically "pulling / clumps of clover from the flower beds," she is actually "looking for courage."
She is, in other words, looking for a sign that her life will change. She looks for this symbolism every day in the minute details of her gardening work. In each clump of clovers, she presumably looks for one with four leaves (a traditional symbol of good luck). Though this process seems to drag on and be endless, the changing seasons are evidence of time passing.
Summer ends, and the speaker describes the way the leaves turn. The leaves of sick trees are the first to change, turning a brilliant yellow. A few dark birds "perform / their curfew of music." The speaker then asks, "You want to see my hands?" which are as empty as when the birds began to sing. In the final lines of the poem, the speaker wonders if the point of life is actually to continue living without a sign.
Analysis
The titles of several poems in The Wild Iris are indistinguishable from each other. Referring to the lengthiest canonical hours, matins is an early morning worship service. In a literary sense, matins can also be the morning song of birds. The word comes from the Latin matutinus ("early in the morning"), which references Mater Matuta, a Latin goddess of the ripening grain that the poet Lucretius made into a goddess of the dawn. Glück's poems entitled "Matins" are from the point of view of a gardener.
The speaker in "Matins" (#5) addresses someone in a casual manner. As a matin is a prayer, the "you" in this poem is a deity with whom the speaker has a personal relationship. In other poems in the collection entitled "Matins," the relationship between the speaker and the divine figure is distant or strained. Here, the speaker addresses the deity in a personable and informal manner, opening the poem by saying, "You want to know how I spend my time?" This question is posed in one line, and thus in one breath, without any punctuation or line breaks adding a pause. This gives the impression that the speaker is getting something off her chest by making this address.
In the next lines, the speaker answers her own question: she walks the front lawn, "pretending / to be weeding." The line break places emphasis on the word "pretending," showing the conflict between the external factors in the speaker's life and her internal world. She tells the deity, "You ought to know / I'm never weeding," suggesting the deity's omniscience—the deity sees (or "ought" to see) through her pretense. These lines are also slightly chastising, which adds a playful quality to the speaker's character. Glück is well-known for the distinct voices in her poems, and this speaker is no exception.
Though the speaker says she is only pretending to weed, she still physically performs the act. Down on her knees, she pulls clumps of clover from the flower beds. Being on one's knees is often a posture of prayer, which aligns with the poem's title. The speaker states that she is "looking for courage, for some evidence" that her life will change. This is a painstaking process, as she examines each clump for "the symbolic leaf" (the four-leaf clover, a sign of good luck). This is slow, painstaking work, but soon the world begins to reflect the passage of time.
As the summer approaches its end, the scenery begins to change. This is presented in a sad way: one of the given details is that the sick trees change first, "the dying / turning brilliant yellow." That a warm color is placed alongside death is an interesting contrast. As the trees change color, "a few dark birds perform / their curfew of music." The dying are colored a "brilliant yellow" while the living are described as "dark," which diverges from traditional associations. The word "curfew" is suggestive of local sound ordinances, or designated "quiet times." Again, there is a contrast at work in the poem: the free sound of the bird's music is placed inside the limit of a "curfew."
After describing the concert of the birds, with its designated start and end time, the speaker asks, "You want to see my hands?" This is the longest line in the poem, and like the first question posed, it is presented in one line without a pause for breath. The speaker's hands are empty, reflecting her internal state. They are "As empty now as at the first note" of the bird's music, showing that the speaker's suffering comes from the time that has passed without the speaker receiving a divine sign. But at the end of the poem, the speaker opens herself to a different possibility: "Or was the point always / to continue without a sign?" In other words, the speaker wonders whether she can let go of her suffering, and make peace with the passage of time and lack of divine communication.
