To Waken An Old Lady

William Carlos Williams’s poem “To Waken an Old Lady” appears to assign itself a purpose in its own title. While the poem quickly identifies itself as concerned with the nature of old age, the “Old Lady” of the title doesn’t explicitly appear in the body of the text. In fact, the title introduces a certain amount of ambiguity into the poem: is the old lady asleep, that she needs to be wakened? Is “Waken” used more rhetorically in the title, referring to an awakening of awareness or vitality? Regardless, the poem’s title marks it as an occasional poem, a poem which exists to accomplish some purpose—namely, the waking up of an old lady, in whatever respect. The poem begins this work by setting out to define old age, declaring “Old age is” in its first line (Line 1). What follows promises to answer the question posed by this half definition.

Rather than providing either a straightforward or rhetorical answer, Williams follows the first line by defining old age in terms of imagery: it is “a flight of small / cheeping birds” (Lines 2-3). In the image’s first line, it is left ambiguous whether “flight” is a description of traveling in the air or fleeing some threat. Before the third line appears, in fact, vulnerability is the defining characteristic of the image. The line, “a flight of small” (Line 2), emphasizes the diminutive characteristic of old age and what could either be the freedom of air travel or the anxiety of running away. The lack of any other defining elements of the image aside from size seem at first to suggest the latter definition of “flight” (Line 2). While the following line quickly puts this ambiguity to rest, Williams’s use of short lines allows such ambiguities to season the clarity of his poem with subtle alternate meanings. The third line reveals the “flight” (Line 2) to be literal, and the “small” refers to “cheeping birds” (Lines 2-3).

The poem’s first and central metaphor, namely old age being compared to a flock of small birds, is surprising not only for the usual effects of a fresh image, but also for the collective nature of the image. For Williams, old age is not a single bird but a collection of many birds, a flock which is singular only insofar as it is composed of many disparate parts. Already, Williams has complicated his definition of aging by infusing it with multiplicity. An old person is not simply one entity but is composed of a host of characteristics, identities, experiences, and impulses—moving parts which work together to form a whole.

The landscape of Williams’s metaphor is as important to the poem’s definition of old age as the birds. The birds fly “skimming / bare trees / above a snow glaze” (Lines 4-6). Old age, then, is not simply a multiplicity of vulnerabilities, but one predicated on a harsh world of lack. The birds fly above the earth, but only barely, “skimming” above trees “bare” of any natural bounty (Lines 4, 5). This picture of a winter landscape fits neatly into the idiomatic conception of aging as going through “seasons” of life—concluding, finally, in winter. Williams expands this idiom to emphasize the difficulty of this season, which is characterized by its lack of food and harsh living conditions.

The poem further emphasizes these difficulties through the weather the birds inhabit, where the flock must struggle against a “dark wind” that buffets them (Line 9). Williams describes the flock as “Gaining and failing” (Line 7) against the wintry turbulence, which suggests that old age is a struggle which is speckled with both triumphs and failures. Just when the text’s metaphoric definition of old age is at its bleakest, however, the voice of the poet interrupts the image to ask, “But what?” (Line 10). This line appears at almost exactly the halfway mark in the poem, which is composed of an even number of lines and so lacks an exact middle line. Regardless, the interruption sets up a poetic turn in a very blatant fashion. The apparent surprise of the poet also works to bring more immediacy to the poem, as it suggests that the image is really happening in real time. The rhetorical device also serves to lend credibility to the poem’s definition of old age, painting a picture as it does of the poet as simply observing and recording the image, not inventing it.

After this singular question in the poem, composed of only two words, the text returns to the image. The happening which evoked the surprise of the poet is, at first, not apparent in the poem. Instead, the text devotes ample space to setting the scene before it introduces the final turn in its ode to aging. The birds are no longer struggling against the “dark wind” (Line 9), but instead now “rest[…]” (Line 12) perched on “harsh weedstalks” (Line 11). Because the line “On harsh weedstalks” (Line 11) appears before the subject of the sentence—the flock that is resting—winter’s severity is highlighted by the poem yet again. After all, “harsh weedstalks” are about the most unappealing of resting places for a flock of birds in nature: Not only are the plants weeds, but they are also explicitly described as “harsh” (Line 11).

At this point in the poem, after the scene which prompted the poet’s surprise is set, the text introduces its second em dash. After its appearance, it is followed by the shortest line in a poem of short lines: “the snow” (Line 13). Earlier in the poem, the “snow glaze” (Line 6) is used to describe the bitterness of winter. Here, however, the poem coyly introduces snow before contextualizing the image. While the reader may expect yet another image of dearth—after all, this theme has dominated the poem’s extended image so far—the poem instead introduces a complication. The snow is “covered with broken / seedhusks” (Lines 14-15). While the first line of the phrase yet again emphasizes the trials of winter by enjambing the syntax at “broken” (Line 14), the appearance of “seedhusks” (Line 15) suggests sustenance. Even aside from being food for birds, seeds are traditional and powerful images of growth, hope, and the promise of bounty. While the flock of birds must weather the winter winds, they have found food enough to “cover[…]” the earth with their leftovers (Line 14).

The poem concludes with three lines which mirror the fake-out scarcity-to-bounty progression of the previous four lines. Williams first introduces “the wind tempered” (Line 16), evoking the struggles of the “buffet[ing]” (Line 8) “dark wind” (Line 9) plaguing the metaphoric flock without yet saying what accomplishes the tempering. Even when the poem does introduce its bit of hope in the face of the wintry struggles of old age, the line breaks after saying only it is “a shrill” (Line 17), a word which has perhaps more negative connotations than positive. How could anything shrill temper the struggles of the “dark wind” of old age (Line 9)? But the final line reveals that it is simply the high-pitched “piping of plenty” of the flock central to Williams’s image (Line 18). The alliteration of the final line contrasts with the more minimalistic diction of the rest of the poem, evoking the beauty of the scene even as it describes the scene. The flock of birds, though struggling against a harsh winter, still manages to find “plenty” of sustenance and to sing in exultation of the plentitude. In this way, Williams’s conception of old age recognizes the difficulties and struggles of the last leg of life, but it also “temper[s]” (Line 16) this description with the surprising bounty unique to this period of life. The poem, then, is both realist and optimistic. Old age is difficult, Williams thoroughly admits, but it also provides a beautiful bounty akin to a feast for a flock of birds in winter.