This old man; gray and shriveled, from living as many days as there are stars in the sky,

Pressed his hand, hard, against my left shoulder,

And gazed at me, with eyes that had seen the setting of the sun, thousands of times over,

And he gave me knowledge; knowledge, I could never gain from a book.

He spoke to me of his friend, Allen Hancock; how he tried to use money to buy his lack of a musical ear.


He told me, how talent cannot be learned, or gained through practice.


He told me, how he would give anything,

to learn the music he so dearly loves.



He told me, how ambition is as valuable as a sea swelled with gold;

yet as priceless as the ink that pens the last words of a person you love.




He told me how the sea had become lost, through the acts of millions of careless men.

And how no one could stop it. He told me, "Change begets change."


He told me many dozens of things I will never forget.



And when his hand left my shoulder, and he gazed off into the starry sky, with his eyes, that had seen all;

His mind, which never had failed to remember any word, phrase, or formula, that had ever passed through it,

This genius of a man,

with his eyes--his silver blue eyes, that had seen all--met my gaze once more, and spoke to me words I will never forget:



"If only I had as much talent as you."



And these are the words by which my life will be lived,

For if this man, who had lived a life as long as mine, six times over,

That had passed through childhood as a prodigy,

That knew more things than I could ever wish to know,

And had done things I can only dream of doing,



If this man; this gray, old man.

If he was the one who stood in front of me...him, bedazzled, by my talent

Than my future holds much more fortune than I think.