The Young Ones

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In this poem, the speaker watches some teenagers get on the bus where she is travelling. Some aspects of them catch her attention, because they contrast with her present self and also with the way she used to be when she was their age. By looking at them, she reflects on boldness and insecureness.

They slip on to the bus, hair piled up high.
New styles each month, it seems to me. (...)

In the first line, the persona describes the young ones succinctly. The words she uses suggest she admires them. Firstly,  she presents them by their smooth movements, evoked by the word “slip”. Secondly, she comments on their hairstyle, which, in her view, seem to be different every month.

                                      (...)  I look,
Not wanting to be seen, casting an eye
Above the unread pages of a book.

She is interested in the teenagers who have got on her bus and observes them furtively.  She pretends to be reading because she doesn't want to be noticed. She appears to be shy and self-conscious.

They are fifteen or so. When I was thus,
I huddled in school coats, my satchel hung
Lop-sided on my shoulder. Without fuss
These enter adolescence; being young

Seems good to them, a state we cannot reach,
No talk of ‘awkward ages’ now. (...)

In the second stanza and in the first lines of the third one, she compares her youth with today´s youth. The teenagers she is looking at are around 15. When she was their age, far from flaunting fashionable hairstyles like them, she “huddled in school coats”. She didn´t seem to pay so much attention to her looks as her lop-sided hutchel suggests. We can assume that she was insecure and felt rather awkward and uncomfortable when she was young. On the other hand, young people nowadays seem to enter adolescence with ease, and they seem to be happy and self-confident.  In her view, nobody seems to talk about “awkward ages” any more. The speaker feels a twinge of envy at this easy youth and uses the first- person plural pronoun to create a sense of rapport with the readers to whom she invites to share her view: “a state we cannot reach”.

                                   (...) I see
How childish gazes staring out of each
Unfinished face prove me incredibly

Old-fashioned. (...)

In the third stanza, the speaker sees the teenagers staring at her and she concludes that they must think she is “incredibly/ old- fashioned”. The words that are used to describe the young ones in these lines are related to their immaturity: “childish”, “unfinished”. The fact that both the speaker and the teenagers are examining each other allows the persona to introduce two different vantage points through which to assess the two stages in life.

(...) Yet at least I have the chance
To size up several stages – young yet old,
Doing the twist, mocking an ‘old-time’ dance:
So many ways to be unsure or bold.

She seems to grant the young ones their assessment of herself, but she explains that one of the advantages of being her age is that, as she is “young yet old”, she is able to understand different stages in life. It is as if she is doing the twist, the dance of the sixties, in which the body is rotated first to one side and then to the other. In the same way, she could be young or old, or she could be considered young  or old, depending on point of view. In any case, her life experience has allowed her to examine different ways, at different ages, to be unsure or bold. She was unsure when she was young- she huddled in her school coat- and she continues being unsure today as she hides behind the unread pages of a book, not wanting to be seen and casting an eye shyly on the young ones. In contrast, the teenagers seem to be bold even if they are young. They feel good, they flaunt new hairstyles and they gaze at her openly,  so evidently, being unsure or bold is not related to age.