When Hair Falls Off and Eyes Blur and
When Hair Falls Off and Eyes Blur and - meaning Summary
Aging and Small Consolations
The poem contemplates physical and mental decline—hair falling, blurred eyes, shrinking minds—and the erasure of youthful memory. Facing illness and mortality, the speaker contrasts human frailty with the steady rhythms of nature: trees leaf, clouds open, mountains stand. In that contrast, tenderness survives in small, attentive gestures—hands that "creep budgingly" over a face—suggesting compassion and presence as a response to loss and deterioration.
Read Complete Analyseswhen hair falls off and eyes blur And thighs forget(when clocks whisper and night shouts)When minds shrivel and hearts grow brittler every Instant(when of a morning Memory stands, with clumsily wilted fingers emptying youth colour and what was into a dirtied glass)Pills for Ills (a recipe against Laughing Virginity Death) then dearest the way trees are made leaves open Clouds take sun mountains stand And oceans do Not sleep matters nothing;then(then the only hands so to speak are they always which creep budgingly over some numbered face capable of a largest nonglance the least unsmile or whatever weeds feel and fish think of)
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