Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Just considering the title, the reader may expect the poem to deal with danger because the word 'warning' is often seen on alerting signs or labels. However, as the title does not reveal what one should be warned about, creating  curiosity and expectation in the reader.

The layout shows that the poem consists of twenty-two lines arranged into an irregular pattern: an eleven-line-long stanza followed by two quatrains and a tercet. The rhyme scheme is irregular and emphasizes  the atmosphere of uncertainty introduced by the title.

The poem deals with the theme of ageing with a tone of self-directed irony. The speaking voice explains her vision about her future life: when she is old she will do crazy things, like wearing mad, striking colours, wasting money on clothing, doing childish actions like ringing bells, sitting on the pavement or going out in her slippers, even learning to spit. Then she addresses another person, a silent listener, by saying 'You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat' (l.12). It follows that the speaker not only speaks about herself but also to another person, maybe her husband, as in line 16  she uses the personal pronoun 'we'. In the third stanza the tone changes as the poetess states that, instead, they have to live as they are expected to live, because they “must set a good example for the children”, perhaps their grandchildren. The poem ends with an ironical question: the speaker wonders whether she should start behaving a bit oddly so that people will not be shocked when she starts acting foolishly or in a non-conformist way.

Taking a close look at the first word of the poem, 'When' (l.1), repeated in line 5 and again at the beginning of the last line, the reader understands that the composition revolves around the theme of time. The repetion of the conjunction 'And'  (anaphora) increases the pace of the poem and  emphasises a sense of euphoria that is connected to a series of mad, irreverent  and childish actions. Moreover, the use of action verbs like  'wear', 'spend', 'sit down', 'go out' , 'learn', 'spit' clearly adds to the meaning of the poem.  They all belong to the semantic field of 'action'. So the semantic choice of the poet may suggest the speaker's desire to live in a free, unconventional, and mad way. In addition, one cannot but mention the frequent occurrence of alliterations (the sound “s” ) in the whole text. It is a way to create sound parallelisms between the words “spend”, “satin sandals”,  “summer gloves” (ll. 3-4) and “so”, “surprised”, “suddenly”, “start” (ll.21-22) to respectively convey a sense of excitement and of shock or surprise. 

To conclude, the intelligent reader understands that the poem deals with the theme of time and ageing in an unsual, funny way.