When Greatness Never Comes

From childhood I dreamt of doing wondrous things, stringing together an unending, unbreakable necklace of words, gold- toned sounds feeding meaning to my readers, like food to the famished. I grew bolder: I would create word-mountains in the reader's mind, words that would never die, but those words were all stillborn. Years, decades went by. I grew fat and happy with wife and family and friends. Finally, with defiance at the caprice called Fate, who parcels out talent by her whim alone, I said, "So be it! I'll never touch Shakespeare's toe, nor ruffle Dickens' collar-- I'll never even get to tickle silly Ezra Pound." I'm anonymous, and so too are you, most likely.... And that is all right, because as a young man, you see, my soul came to me-- oh yes, my soul came quietly to me, and whispered, I exist forever, without a start, without an end, a mockery of time.Then it teased, "Now fit THAT into your mind, into your body ever so brief, just a breath of flesh really." Things that come, come in their own way.