Aging
The speaker suffers from the effects of aging in two separate but related respects. Firstly, she suffers as a direct result of the aging process. She enumerates some of these effects—she is going deaf, for instance, and seems to have trouble reading as a result of blindness. She also appears to have trouble controlling her movements. Her tone, and her repeated demands to know how old she is, are evidence of a general confusion and loss of mental abilities. However, these struggles are only one half of her suffering—she also suffers as a result of others' mistreatment and dismissal. Others, she says, blame her for her own problems. Meanwhile, the younger generation leaves her behind. The fact that she repeatedly asks to know her own age suggests that she is ignored by those around her. In general, the speaker feels as if she is a mountain, or else as if she is isolated on a mountain—she is separate from the rest of humanity, existing on a different scale, unmoving and ancient.
Dignity
One of the most devastating effects of the speaker's aging is the way that it leaves her feeling undignified, reliant on others for affirmation of her humanity. Her constant demands to be told how old she is can be understood as part of a search for self-understanding—and, more specifically, as an attempt to see herself as a human being, with a unique history and set of experiences. The poem even suggests that dignity is the only thing she truly cares about, more than life itself. The work's final lines, in which the speaker welcomes the coming of night, can be read metaphorically as a welcoming of death. In the face of death, the speaker is not afraid: all she wants, she says, is to know how old she is, and thereby to attain a measure of dignity before she dies.
