The speaker of this poem is a guide, and the poem is her patter. She leads visitors through a building, and from the choir room, the tapestry and the gift shop we can guess it is some kind of religious house. We never hear the visitors, only her replies, so we reconstruct their questions: Can we see her? Can we come back later? Do you sell the socks? The central idea is that a person who has chosen solitude has become a stop on a tour, one more treasure "in our care," and that she keeps herself unowned anyway.
The opening sets the terms. A sixteenth-century cabinet, "originally to keep wine," now "holds urns / of ashes awaiting internment." The object has been repurposed, and its use has shifted from pleasure to mortality. The printed word is "internment," which means confinement, rather than "interment," which means burial. Whether by design or slip, the word hovers over a poem about someone who lives behind a door. The cabinet is a quiet preview of what the hermitess is to the institution: something inherited, kept, and given a new job.
Formally the poem is free verse with no rhyme and no regular meter, and that suits a voice rehearsed in speech. The syntax is full of interruptions. "Perhaps if you return—" is cut off by a flat "No." The speaker corrects herself mid-thought, as if the hope were unprofessional. Then come the clipped fragments "No. No socks." and "No, she won't let herself / be photographed." The sentences get short when the answer is firm and spill over several lines when she relaxes into description, as in the long, trailing line "between her long black skirts and her shoes—". The line itself seems to catch a glimpse.
That description is the most vivid writing in the poem. The hermitess has "ink / and paper, needles and yarn, a small / black cat with white paws." Her world is a handful of tactile things, each one a tool for making. The socks in "brilliant colors" are the best detail, because they are visible only as a flash below black skirts. The image suggests an inner life more colorful than its plain outward dress, though it is only a suggestion. The speaker's next words, "No. No socks.", could mean the socks are not for sale. They could also mean she has been caught embroidering a rumor. Either way, the hermitess has slipped out of the official account.
The speaker's own language is revealing. "Our hermitess" claims ownership, yet the guide admits "no one knows precisely / how she spends those days alone." The hermitess is also given rules, like a museum piece with a notice beside it. She may be met only "by chance," and the visitor must "be quiet and ask no questions." Her books can be bought, and she might sign one, but she will not be photographed or sketched. She sells what she makes and refuses to be an image. The poem draws that line sharply, and the cat is the only warm gesture on offer.
Then the tour moves on: "Now down this corridor is the choir room." The change is abrupt and a little comic, and it makes a point. The hermitess is item two on an itinerary. The final stop is a tapestry of "Magdelene in the Resurrection garden," a scene the Gospel of John gives to Mary Magdalene, who meets someone at an empty tomb and is told not to cling to him. The poem never makes the link, but a closed door, a forbidden touch and an unanswerable stranger echo each other. The guide's last words, "We're very fortunate to have it in our care," could apply just as well to the woman behind the door.
The poem is significant because it stays on the right side of that door. It would be easy to write a portrait of the hermitess, but the poem gives us only her belongings and a guide's evasions, so we are placed among the curious visitors. Our wish to see her is exposed, and her refusal looks more like dignity than rudeness. The tone is gentle, even funny, but it asks a real question about how we treat people who withdraw from us: with reverence, with curiosity, or with a gift shop.