To Waken An Old Lady Poem by William Carlos Williams

To Waken An Old Lady

Rating: 2.8


Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind --
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested --
the snow
is covered with broken
seed husks
and the wind tempered
with a shrill
piping of plenty.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Gangadharan Nair Pulingat 29 January 2015

So much imaginations and likes it.

2 0 Reply
Stanton Hager 01 April 2012

WC Williams wrote this poem when he was 37 years young, which accounts for the poem's piping plenty ending. I, at 65 years OLD, dare to re-write Williams' poem, thereby making it a truer definition of old age: Old age is a flight of gray whispery crows skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind until, wearied, they dropp from the sky onto broken weedstalks: spiked bent blotches on a white blank field no longer by the shrill wind disquieted. -Stanton Hager, March 2012

7 10 Reply
Yacov Mitchenko 15 March 2010

Zen-like concision and beautiful flow. One of the few poems by the author that I can appreciate.

2 3 Reply
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