The Mountain

Mountains are traditionally a symbol of timelessness in poetry. More than any other natural phenomenon on Earth, they remain solid, unmoved, and appear to be unchanging. Yet, mountains do age, and in this poem the mountain is personified as having lived a long time, experiencing the effects of human aging, such as nearsightedness, deafness, and memory loss. Rather than glorifying the immortality of the mountain, Bishop uses it to explore both the effects of aging on the psyche and the effects of an almost immortal experience of time on the mountain.

The mountain has lived so long that it doesn’t know how old it is. Perhaps the mountain has lived so long that it is senile, but more likely, it simply does not have a human sense of time. Either way, the mountain seems to be in distress, growing deaf and near-sighted. The children with their clambering lights leave too early. The birds who live on the mountain die, leaving it lonely, and confused. Leaving the mountain without an answer to “Tell me how old I am” indicates that nobody is listening or nobody knows the answer.

Mortals invent time. An almost immortal being, like the mountain, cannot fit into the cycle of human life precisely because it does not die.