These are a selection of poems authored by 4 Wing’s Padre Nicholas Young.
Padre Nicholas Young – Supplied Photo
It is perhaps only in a diary
A man dare tell all without fear
Of discovery, but when his wedded wife
Of a dozen years who was once a
Dark beauty of independent means,
Requests fine words to represent the life domestic,
And his child, their lovely daughter, already so like her mother
And in more than mere looks,
Echoes the call for versification,
A lone man can only give in.
So, this man who is blessed with double happiness
Sits on his warm sofa in his warm house while
The lady impresarios discuss the possible,
The likely outcome of rhyming,
Scribbles in the hope that his love,
His dedication and thankfulness will blossom
Forth in letters and syllables
That can only play at giving
Speech to life.
Give it all up for the kingdom,
And be set free of earthly cares.
Here are words that offer up
An inspiration to holiness
Luring hearts to grasp at hope,
That are mystically spoken
But not so well lived out in the flesh.
As much as anyone should look to heaven
And seek to behold the light from on high
A call of bodily appetites and needs
However guiltless
Is heard time after time and again.
How much of this voice one takes heed
Is as much freedom stolen from
Being at one with the cosmos
And That which shaped it.
Even love, that spiritual force
Giving all breath with such uplifting gusts
Raising body and soul, it seems
Above the loud and noisy crowd
Pulling the trapped from eddies of confusion,
When tied to any worldly comfort
Stands only as another barrier to
A hard-earned ascension.
Time is now to harness the flame
That cuts those free-forged bonds
In remembrance that we can be dragged down by ears
Not all attuned to the everlasting melodies.
And for a whole year
Not even a peep
Seems like emptiness,
Or to others like bliss.
All socks in a row
The kitchen spotless and glimmering
The grass mowed to within a centimetre of existence
Symptoms of normalness
That should be loathed,
Not aspired to as a wellspring of comfort.
The man sitting eyes closed at his ease
Stretched out on a Caribbean deckchair
Is the most heartless kind of monster,
For nothing is so important as his rest
And all things that prick at his eyelids
Poke at his belly…
This life mostly needs doing away with.
