Even if I didn’t know it yet that letter shined for quite some time
Before my nanny shelved all of the bills
Giving me my daily dosage of Vitamin-C pills, she handed me the thrill of a young lads life
Eager as ever on immediately gleaming the sender’s address, I checked to see that she wasn’t looking, then knifed crystal clean the part of his letter printed slit
Sure as sugar I was going to be left jaw-droppingly impressed to say the very least
A God-given feast for these eyes
This was most certainly it, a chance of a lifetime, getting to pit my naive wits against the best, someone immeasurably, notoriously deemed to be finer than fine
I took a seat, gnashed my pearly-white teeth, read every single word, every single line, out loud and on glorious repeat
My poor nanny, she could not speak, surprisingly proud as it turns out
“Dear Master O’Driscoll…” and on it went, undoubtedly sent by a wordsmith like no other, the greatest in the universe
Really I could not wait to inform the aul father and mother
My oh my, how they would curse
Nothing to do with the bills but owing to a grandmaster’s quip
An absurd degree of excitement, as each and every one of his words spilled I could not hold back an already enticed eye
What an insatiable thirst growing inside!
But why oh why had he chosen me, surely there were a million other letters that posed equally good questions, equally fierce suggestions on a rather daft delinquents part
Taken some precious time away from his mind-boggling art
What it was he really had to say pierced me, sent my day into orbit
About how he really thought he wasn’t any such genius, that he makes mistakes too
That if he is a genius then there are most certainly more than just a few of us out there
“I might seem to know the math but I’m quite elderly, dear boy. One foot in front of the other, or so they say, and I still can’t manage to navigate the stairs. What can I say, seems the simple thing has turned out to be the very bane of my existence, a dreadfully unsolvable part of my day.”