Jane Hirshfield: "A Room"

A room does not turn its back on grief.

Anger does not excite it.

Before desire, it neither responds

nor draws back in fear.

Without changing expression,

it takes

and gives back;

not a tuft in the mattress alters.

Windowsills evenly welcome

both heat and cold.

Radiators speak or fall silent as they must.

Doors are not equivocal,

floorboards do not hesitate or startle.

Impatience does not stir the curtains,

a bed is neither irritable nor rapacious.

Whatever disquiet we sense in a room

we have brought there.

And so I instruct my ribs each morning,

pointing to hinge and plaster and wood—

          You are matter, as they are.

          See how perfectly it can be done.

          Hold, one day more, what is asked.           

"A Room" by Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart. © Harper Perennial, 1997.

Photography credit: Untitled image by Getty found at this link (originally black and white).