Age
Age - meaning Summary
Age as Distant Landscape
The speaker describes growing older as a distancing of former self into a floating, inhabited cloud. Former vigorous pursuits become a "tall game" seen from afar, while the present self moves more slowly through life amid silence and space. The poem ends with a quiet, practical anxiety about legacy: the speaker bends to inspect the marks left behind, wondering whether aging leaves clear footprints, faint traces, or subtle, birdlike impressions.
Read Complete AnalysesMy age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud. I bend closer, discern A lighted tenement scuttling with voices. O you tall game I tired myself with joining! Now I wade through you like knee-level weeds, And they attend me, dear translucent bergs: Silence and space. By now so much has flown From the nest here of my head that I needs must turn To know what prints I leave, whether of feet, Or spoor of pads, or a bird’s adept splay.
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