Homage To Young Men Lyrics

Nizlopi Homage To Young Men

I want to talk to all the young men out there

It’s for the women too, but especially the men,

'cos it’s tough to be a young man in this world

You have to face so much heartbreak and loss

In love and career and life

It’s easy to forget the meaning and give up

To burn up or sell out to addictions, despair or greed

Easy to forget that life’s a journey

with a beginning, a middle and an end

It’s about navigating the future, your future

It’s about learning to become a man who’s real,

and able to love



Are you waiting for me?

Are your hands down in the dirt?

We belong together

I’ve been longing since my birth

To be arms around you

To be true to who we are

To let all our pain out

To be playing in your heart


So let’s talk about the first stage of life

The departure, when your boat is pushed out on the river

Most of who you are is still your small self

The you your family has made you,

your schooling and your friends

You’ve still not found your deep self, your Great Self,

'cos that’s what the journey’s for

So you set out, full of hope, but with a heavy load

All the baggage of your upbringing

All the love, yes, but the f..ckedupness too

Maybe the absent father, or the smothering mother,

or the cold indifference of those around you

It’s no wonder you’ve a rough ride coming

It’s gonna get tough and it’s got to

So you can find yourself

So you can become, a real man



And that’s when you hit the second stage of life

The initiation in the rapids and the storms

That’s when you find the pain of brokenheartedness

Love affairs that fail, failures in career

and all your hopes for what the world might have been

Plenty young men founder grazed on such jagged rocks as these

Bruised and angry in a storm of violence towards self and others

But it doesn’t have to stay like that

No, my friends, not if you push on and open to the inner grace

that will bring you courage

The courage to face reality as it is,

without lies

The courage to know your wound but to outgrow it,

and insist on beauty

The courage to open your heart,

to hold fast to truth,

and to stand each step in dignity



And that’s the courage that brings your boat to the third stage of life

To see how your small self is held in a greater Self

And that you’re fit to be an elder in your community,

able to share the gifts and the blessings

Able to support and inspire what gives life among your people

And to love your beloved,

to love and be loved by the Beloved no less, my friends

Because we’re talking here of love in all its meanings

And you can only love with a deepening heart

And that is why you had to grow courage on this journey to the ocean

That’s what your battle wounds on the field of life were all about

That, my dear friends,

is what qualifies you

to be a man in your community

Capable of loving and able to be loved...

Capable of loving

and able to be loved...

Capable of loving

and able

to be

loved