Youth

1.
Walking through the maze of life,
Time cuts us with his sharpened knife.
The walls, unbounded, dark and high
Have fooled us with their terrible lie

2.
Of youth and love and energy,
A transient state of joy and glee,
Soon darkened by more cunning side-
A face we try so hard to hide.

3.
This void of darkness could, with ease,
Become our soul, or taunt and tease.
What wicked things our minds could do
To people we rely on to

4.
Release us from this stagnant state,
To save us from our brewing hate,
To lead the path to light - yes, they
Will save us on the judgement day.

5.
Youth comes to at a hefty price
And to enjoy it would be nice,
With sunshine warming, as we play,
But mostly, it ends with decay

6.
Of all that we could be, and more.
Words whispered crash upon the shore;
The waves of mankind, teeming blue,
The old always replaced with new.

7.
A fire, burning bright in air,
We lit it, to burn our despair.
To make ash out of all we hid -
The demons that we tried to rid.

8.
But even fire could not impale,
Not even its vigour unveil
The darkest black that presses on
The never reaching light of dawn.

9.
In this endless duality,
Only the white we try to see.
The scarlet red we push away,
On those deceitful thorns we lay.

10.
This age is not measured by years,
It’s measured by our drowning tears.
It lives off its maliciousness
And eats away our innocence.

11.
There’s no escape from this mousetrap.
There is no treasured, holy map,
No path that leads the way to peace,
We must knit our own golden fleece.

12.
To save ourselves from our own minds,
We must forget, must leave behind,
All our doubts, and all our fears,
To regain all wasted years.


The explanation stanza by stanza:

This poem, at first glance, does not seem to have continuity, but it was meant to have been written that way. The twelve stanzas signify the twelve hours on a clock. Just as youth is a discontinuous amalgamation of memories and regrets, each stanza in this poem signifies an aspect of youth. This explanation is just a general guideline to the comprehension of the poem. Every stanza can and will have a different personal meaning to every reader.


1. Here, life is alluded to a maze. In a maze, there are many paths that a person can take, just as in life, and not all lead to the end, just as not all lives have profound meaning\purpose.
Time is personified as the Grim Reaper. The sharpened knife signifies the scythe, and as he cuts us, we die.
The line signifies that there is no easy way out of the maze. The only way to go is forward. As a person takes a wrong turn and reaches a dead end, there is no turning back. This signifies death, or suicide.

1. Life, or more specifically, youth, is seen as a beautiful time of joy and playfulness, but it is a lie, as it is much more turbid.
Even if there are some periods of happiness, they are short-lived. We are plagued by our misfortunes, and they form a face we try to hide deep within us.

2. This void of darkness signifies the part of our mind where we store all our problems, and it could easily swallow us; we could let it take over our life.
A burdened mind could do wicked things, even unknowingly, to family members or friends. This happens when we allow evil inside us. There is an allusion to the poem, ‘Ode of Remembrance’ (Ода Памяти), here.

3. We rely on the people we love to help us forget our misery. If they are successful, they would be the forces that show us the light. There is reference to Hesse’s ‘Demian’, where Hesse writes that Sinclair’s family made up the light realm, signifying security and peace.

4. Youth should be a time of enjoyment and discovery. A time spent playing with friends in nature, but the poet says that all things end with decay. The young trees, when acted upon a strong enough, foul, force, will die and decay. This force is the evil that surrounds us.

5. Here, the poet speaks of mankind, comparing it to the ocean, where every word spoken or thought, generates great waves. There is an allusion to the butterfly effect. Every action generates waves. A strong enough action could cause a tsunami.
To maintain balance (equilibrium), the new should always replace the old.

6. This stanza is a sharp contrast to the former. In this, the poet describes our inner soul, or ‘heart’ as a huge fire which we feed with our troubles and worries. We burn them to try to forget about them, and this fire either fuels our passion, or our insanity. It is a reference to a concept that fire is an unstoppable force that reduces to ashes all in its path. It is often used by teenagers as a stylized way to signify forgetting about their problems. “....our responsibilities, burn it all, burn it all...”

7. However, even this fire could not impale the neverending darkness within. It only made the darkness more profound, so that even the rising sun could not penetrate its depth. Here, there is a reference to dawn being a time of renewal and purity. In many religions, dawn at 6 am is considered a holy time, when evil forces cease their activities.

8. In this stanza, again there is an allusion to ‘Demian’. He talks about youth being dual. A safe loving bright side, and an evil dark side. However, the dark side is very attractive, and it often seduces those who are curious, or weak, and this seduction is necessary on the path to self discovery. However, the society has taught us only to be good, so we bury this urge. This is like a rose bed. The roses are beautiful on the outside (our facade), but the thorns (these urges) prick us when we lie on the bed. The petals deceive us - they are not the truth.

9. Here, the poet reminds us that youth is not a specific age. It doesn’t start at puberty and ends at adulthood. Youth is the concept of losing and gaining some innocence. A time of self-discovery and self-acceptance. It is a state of mind. It is malicious for some, and less so for others (those who have accepted that they must be both good and evil to progress).

10. In this stanza, youth (life) is compared to a mousetrap. We get caught in this mousetrap, and we cannot just look at a map, or be saved. We must save ourselves. There is an allusion to Agatha Christie’s ‘Mousetrap’, and to the Golden Fleece of greek mythology.

11. The final stanza ends on an indeterminate note. It tells us that to regain all our years that were wasted doubting, worrying, etc, we must forget about them and move on. The only way to exit the maze is to discover every part of our body and soul, every pole, and to forget our misdeeds and sins. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, you become enlightened, and consequently you become the yin-and-yang.


Written as a present to father's birthday, October 2, 2016.