Sixty-Seven — Summary

Waking from sleep, the speaker turns and seems to see someone dear resting nearby. The image is brief but vivid—so real that it feels like companionship. Then comes the correction: it is not a person, only a trick of light. That small disappointment matters. The final line lands quietly: “I remain / among those / who live alone.” What makes the moment moving is how much it says about absence. The speaker’s mind supplies what the heart wants, or what habit remembers. The shift from sleepy illusion to waking truth is gentle, not dramatic, but it leaves a loneliness behind. The title, perhaps an age, adds a sense of long years and accumulated aloneness, though the feeling is immediate and bodily. The mood is hushed, fragile, and resigned, closer to recognition than self-pity.