Tell me how old I am.
This is one of two repeated refrains in this work, and it both echoes and contrasts with the other refrain, "I do not know my age." However, rather than expressing uncertainty, this second line is spoken in the imperative, and the command is confident, even impatient. It reflects the speaker's frustration—as she ages, she loses understanding and control, and relies on others to regain them—but it also reflects her continued self-assurance and her sense that she is entitled to be heard and responded to. The imperative sentence, addressed to an unnamed listener, implicates the reader as well: we, too, are being directed to respond, and our inability to do so intensifies the poem's impression that the speaker is fundamentally cut off from others.
I do not mean to complain.
They say it is my fault.
Up until this point in the poem, Bishop's speaker has characterized aging as primarily a physiological process with individual, physical symptoms—for instance, breakdowns in vision and hearing. However, here another aspect of aging comes to the fore, this one social rather than physiological. The line "I do not mean to complain" suggests that the speaker has been censured or otherwise encountered dismay when she voices her feelings about aging. The second half of this quote is even more explicit, informing us that the speaker feels blamed for the very symptoms that have caused her suffering. Moreover, the vagueness of her language here leads us to believe that she herself does not understand why she is being blamed, or who exactly is faulting her: the speaker's own confusion, and others' dismissals, blend together to create a feeling of shame and loneliness.
Bird-calls
dribble and the waterfalls
go unwiped
As the poem continues its imagery grows stranger, with a metaphorical landscape offering a surreal edge to descriptions of an otherwise quotidian reality. Here, deafness, incontinence, and a general loss of bodily control are represented not through literal language but through imagery of the natural world. This choice accomplishes several things. First, it renders a familiar reality new—readers likely are familiar with the symptoms of aging, but these images bring freshness to that familiar concept. Second, it vividly conveys the bizarreness of the speaker's internal experience. This second aspect is accomplished particularly through the use of unexpected verbs. Birdsong "dribbles" (a verb typically not applied to sound) and waterfalls are not "wiped" (an unexpected word choice given the scale of the image). This blending creates a feeling of disorientation, imitating the speaker's own.
