The Young Man

[cidermaid]

Hi Eli

I've read this several times now (and also read the other feedback).
I have to confess that I too have a certain amount of confusion in regards to the meaning, this in turn is making it difficult to offer any meaningful crit on punctuation or individual word choice.
At this stage it is difficult to decide if this poem is an enigmatic mystery crafted as some sort of intentional riddle or just a set of not quite fully formed ideas. Either way at the moment it would appear that your poem is not quite delivering, as the readers so far have not managed to draw any real images or coherent threads of thought.
Not sure if this will help or not (as only one view) but will offer my line
thoughts on possible meanings I can see. I appreciate that this is the novice section and as such the comments should be kept light, your poem had caught my attention. So although this will look like a lot of comments I will try and keep them for the most part, based on the images as I see them.

The Yound Man (? spelling assuming you meant young not yound)] From the title "A young man" (No longer a boy) brings to mind virility and strength, prime of life, (also testosterone fuelled, self opinionated, overconfidence ... but then I'm a grumpy old woman!). A young man, is a man at the beginning of his life adventure -- a story yet to be told.

The young man awaits So from the title lead in we have the beginning of a story or adventure, the start of a journey -- somehow on hold, because he is awaiting something.
For screeches of a train First word choice question. awaits for feels clunky and awkward. awaiting for or perhaps awaits the. ? Screeches or screeching. Image / story wise I felt that A train is again about a journey. As a metaphor a train is perhaps a symbol for direct A-B route and or incredible power. (conversly I also see this as a symbol for a restricted life - someone who is controled by pre-set agendas not of thier own making).
Next I ask the question; Why would a train be screeching? either the horn is sounding a signal of arrival or potential danger or it is in the process of aggressive / emergency braking.
begining to gather my thoughts so far I arrive at an image of a man setting out in life, leaving behind his childhood ways, escaping perhaps, becuase the train arrived in a hurry to collect him.
Lights flicker, older men state, The flickering lights (a continuation of the train image - good continuity. (? what this symbolises. failing courage perhaps. Poor comunication). the idea of older men (voices) is introduced. As they are just older not old I imagine these to be still powerful men. if our young man is a gorilla in his prime then these could be the silverbacks. wisdom and strenght still to give him a run for his money. and they make a statment (as opposed to simply saying something). so i assume that this is a word to be noted / believed in as having some relevance.
“There, time is here” (? the use of there did you mean to imply a place or the suggestion of pocession of an individual or group -- becuase of the abiguity of the preceeding text I m left unsure if this is a typo or a punctuation thing. If you meant it as a statement then perhaps an exclamation could help to make the intent of the line clearer. "There! Time is here." or "Their time is here" It potentially makes a huge differance to the read and interpretation. Is our young man a representation time itself. or was this a referance to the time of the younger men? As it currently reads I am left without much to work this out with.
And cane in hand, money to pay A cane suggests dignity and a certain dapper, well to do image or infirmity. money to pay, reinforces the former and then also the next line, the swift departure denotes a sprightly air. so from this I'm getting a re-play of the older men being silverbacks with weighty opinions of note.
Quickly walks away. An emotional / phisical distance. suggestive of a rejection and dismissal of connection / association.

I hope from showing you my thought process you can see why I am left confused as a reader. I have some nice images to work with but everything is just that bit too vuage and obtuse to be able to make any real connections in my mind as to what is being presented. So far I (might) have:- A hurried starting out on a journey, of a powerful identity (possibly time) who (possibly) is on a pre-set course that is remarked upon by... ? wisdom.. at the outset of the journey...who then pulls back and puts distanced from themselves to the identity.

The young man treading
Through narrow halls and
Unfamiliar faces, warned
From his path. “It is done,”
They call, shaking their heads.
“Again ‘tis repeating,” they say. I am not much further forward in this stanza to understanding where the writer wants my thoughts to be taken. the "it is done" is straight out of the Bible, so am I now looking at a figure to represent Jesus. I didn't think so but maybe! Or is this a reconnection with the idea that this is time and then this becomes there is nothing new under the sun. which perhaps would help me to interpret the final line of the stanza as spoken by the older men again I am assuming. (But it might be the voices of the unfamiliar faces).

The use of a capital letter to start each new line is now adding to my problems of working out the mystery. I want to put a period after unfamiliar faces to make the sense of the warning clearer as comming from the older men mentioned previously or did you wish to imply it was the faces speaking?

The young man now backward falls
Knowing nothing to learn, nor
Anything to remember. “Those calls,”
He says, “They will never help.”
Aboard the train he returns,
His journey, he never learns.

[b]Again in the final stanza everything is just out of reach. the first line is just odd syntax. The second implies that he has nothing to learn (what so ever, he already knows everything, but then he remembers nothing, so again my suspicion is this is time we are talking about; as time is only ever the constant now (of the perfect moment) that exists from one moment to the next.

Overall I think that perhaps this was about time. But this was the point, after all of this thought and contemplation I am left unsure and have no definate conclusion and so subsequently it leaves me with a sense of disatisfaction as I felt that i have had to work much to hard to get into your poem and as such it is too vuage and needs some work to help the reader along.

Please do not be discouraged by these notes and be thinking that they are all negative. The opposite is true I have spent the time working through this because i think there is much to commend the ideas you have and even if my thoughts have taken me a million miles from your intended concepts i think your poem is well worth the effort and would encourage you to come back with an edit.
Hope these notes will be of some help, they are of course JMHO
all the best AJ