old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs)&
youth yanks them
down(old
age
cries No
Tres)&(pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n't Don't
&)youth goes
right on
gr
owing old ^*

e. e. cummings

The concluding statement in this poem makes the warnings of old age a
metaphor for a warning of an entirely different sort. In the first two stanzas,
the prohibitions of old age are met by youthful rebellion. The activity of old
age appears within the confines of parentheses, suggesting repression; the
activity of youth is unbounded by parentheses, suggesting refusal to accept
restrictions. ¹

In the central stanza, youth verbally breaks through prohibition by old age,
so that two people (ideally one young, one old) reading simultaneously are
necessary to perform this stanza aloud. The eruption of youth through age in
this stanza may suggest the transition from youth to age, since the subsequent
stanza is a cumulative expression of old age that is not, as in stanza two, coun-
tered by rebellious youth but is followed by an assertion that youth grows old.
The transition from youth to age is suggested at the very center of the poem
by apparent continuity in the juxtaposition of conventionally related sylla-
bles—"laughs / (sing"—as though youth makes both these happy sounds-
before the reader recognizes "sing" as the conclusion of the injunction by old
age, "No Trespassing."

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