Summary
Told from the perspective of a deity, "Retreating Light" concerns the act of creation and the relationship between a person or object and its maker. In the first stanza, the deity addresses a human (likely the gardener-poet from other poems in the collection) and shares the history of storytelling. The deity compares humans to very young children who were always eager for a story. The deity is like an exasperated caregiver who is tired of repeating the same stories. So this divine speaker decided to give humans pencil and paper.
The speaker also gave humans pens made of reeds that this deity had gathered in "afternoons in the dense meadows." The message that the deity communicated to humans was for them to write their own story. This is the end of the first stanza.
In the following stanza, the deity describes a misunderstanding: after all the years of listening on the part of the humans, the deity thought that humans would "know / what a story was." However, as stated in the third stanza, all humans could do was weep. Their discontent is due to wanting "everything told to [them] / and nothing thought through [themselves]."
The deity recounts the realization that humans couldn't think "with any real boldness or passion" because they had not yet had their own lives and experienced the tragedies that accompany life. The speaker bestows lives and tragedies upon humans "because apparently tools alone weren't enough."
After this background story is given, the deity expresses his joy at seeing a writer at work, dreaming by the open window and functioning like an independent being. The writer uses the God-given pencils, and "the summer morning disappears into writing."
In the final stanza, the deity declares that creation always brings great excitement in the beginning. He knew humans would be excited about the act of creation. This leaves the deity free to "attend to other things, in confidence" that humans have no need of him anymore. The end of the poem signifies the departure of the deity.
Analysis
The speakers in The Wild Iris include plants, a human gardener, and a deity. "Retreating Light" is a poem situated in the later section of the collection, and is told from the perspective of a divine figure. The act of "retreating" (as introduced in the title), as well as the act of creation, are inherent to the poem's message.
In the first stanza, the deity addresses a plural "you" that represents human beings, saying, "You were like very young children." This establishes a parent-child relationship between the divine figure and human beings. The children (referring to humans) are "always waiting for a story." According to anthropologists, storytelling is as old as culture. It creates cultural cohesion, serves to educate the young, and fosters connection between people.
However, the divine speaker recounts being tired of telling stories. Like a burnt-out caregiver, the speaker states, "I'd been through it all too many times." The irony is that the speaker is here telling a story about being tired of telling stories. But as the title suggests, this poem is about the speaker's gradual backing off from the role of creator and storyteller.
Weariness led to the deity giving pencils and paper (the tools of writing) to humans. The deity also provides humans with pens made from reeds that the deity gathered himself. In telling this part, the speaker hints at other stories with the vague and beautiful line "afternoons in the dense meadows." This demonstrates that the deity has had a life entirely outside his role as creator of human beings, one of which human beings don't have knowledge.
The speaker told humans to write their own stories. In the second stanza, which is far briefer than the first, the speaker expresses disappointment at the lack of human understanding. After all the years of listening to the speaker's stories, the deity was under the impression that humans would "know / what a story was." In the following stanza, the deity describes the way that human beings wept because they wanted everything told to them, and to not have to think through things themselves. This line shows the responsibility inherent in being a storyteller, which has come to be a burden to the deity.
The two stanzas expressing the speaker's disappointment are the shortest in the poem. The briefness of these stanzas contributes to a sense of disappointment in that the speaker has nothing more to say about the matter, but they also show that this speaker is a deity who does not wish to linger on setbacks. The conflict of the speaker's disappointment is not the main focus of the story being told.
The deity describes having had an epiphany that humans "couldn't think / with any real boldness or passion" because they had not yet had their own lives and the tragedies that accompany life. Here, tragedy is made inherent to taking ownership of one's life. According to this logic, the deity gave human beings the experience of their own lives and tragedies because writing tools alone "weren't enough." This posits the value of experience. Glück has stated in interviews that as a young poet, she believed that she had to sequester herself from the world in order to write. But as she got older, she realized that being in the world and participating in one's life is important to the creative process.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker shares, "You will never know how deeply / it pleases me to see you sitting there / like independent beings." Whereas before, the deity was an exhausted caregiver, here he is a proud parent looking upon his child, now grown and developed. This "[independence]" is further detailed: the human being is "dreaming by the open window," holding the writing tools gifted by the deity. It is not just pure output that is important to the creative process, then, according to this poem. "Dreaming" also plays an essential role in creative writing. The act of writing (and creative practice in general) is portrayed as something that alters time and one's state of consciousness. The deity observes a person sitting by the window "until the summer morning disappears into writing." The writer (possibly the gardener-poet) is totally immersed in her work.
In the final stanza, the deity makes an important declaration concerning the act of creation. This reads, "Creation has brought you / great excitement, as I knew it would, / as it does in the beginning." This opens the question of what happens after "the beginning" has passed. What feelings are then brought about? This functions a bit like a warning not to hold on to the excitement and expect it to last. However, the deity has detached from the responsibility towards his creation. He is now "free... / to attend to other things." These "other things" that need attending to echo the "afternoons in the dense meadows" mentioned earlier in the poem—the deity has a life completely apart from human understanding. The speaker is confident that humans have no more need of their creator, and the deity is thus happy to retreat from a role of responsibility.
