YOUTH

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A crowd of young people
Races along the sun-soaked street,
Their lissom figures firm and light,
Laughing and frolicking in the bright summer heat.

Their passionate bodies, aflame with vitality,
Jostle one another as they run to the beach,
And splash into the tumbling sea:

Blazing with insatiable lust for life,
They yearn to release the wild energy
Exploding within them;

No cares sully their smooth and shining brows:
They think that nothing will ever destroy
Their effervescent joy,

For they have never experienced anything else;
And as they leap and bounce into each wave,
They feel that all creation is their slave.

They have no inkling that even now
Their skin is thinning and losing its glow,
That slowly their veins are beginning to show;
They do not notice,
Because it is so slow.

For they can dance all day and dance all night,
And still have strength to tussle and fight,
And exert their muscles with all their might,
And hardly tire.

They are never distraught,
Know nothing of despair;
Their swift brains dart from thought to thought;
They scarcely have a care.

Old age to them is a distant desolate planet,
Populated by tottering apparitions,
Feeble distortions of themselves,
Which they will never inhabit.

Middle age too is a world
They cannot even guess at,
Where young men now grown bald or fat,
If they try to run or have too much fun,
Will be out of breath or feel like death,
Or have a heart attack;

Where women, no longer girls,
Dress to keep their sagging bodies out of sight,
And dye their hair to disguise the white,
And many begin to wonder why they are there..

Some will try to repair their lives,
With pills or potions, diets or lotions,
Hoping they will give them back the life they have lost,
No matter the cost.

For men and women have always sought
To staunch the flow of time,
And not allow the clock of life to chime
The passing of the flaming days of youth.

Imperceptibly hour by hour,
And year after year,
Until no trace of strength nor beauty is left,
Time drains away their energy and power,
Till they are utterly bereft.

Yet in the past,
By simple ways of mindfulness and breath,
People enabled their bodies to last,
Staying healthy and delaying death,
Their youthful vigour barely less,
By absorbing the power of the universe.

Some there are who still practise and preach
The ancient wisdom,
But the charlatans who today pull the levers of our thought,
Preach derision of what for generations has been taught,
And call it superstition.

Talking nonsense, falsely saying that it contradicts science,
So they, by sneering at the truth,
Have curtailed truth,
And let in the ills of old age everywhere,
More fear and suffering than anyone should bear.

Word-inebriated fools,
Prating on radio and television,
They have mesmerised nations
Into becoming self-destructive tools,
Too brain-washed to realise
What waves upon waves of pseudo-scientific lies
Have done to them.

For most so-called scientsts are blind,
Denying even the existence of mind;
So let the rest of us arise
And strive to make strong and wise
The ailing millions they mislead and despise:
For we must spread the truths we know,
And show the radiant joy-filled path we all can go.

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