I still occasionally stop –
and think,
“what if I could study algorithms?”
But that has passed.

My mathematical talent
What if it found
a trainer to match?
But that too has passed.

Could I render music,
imagined, inchoate, flawless,
upon the canvas of reality?
I suppose I’ll never know.

Why is biology
so natural and intuitive,
even though I’ve never studied?
The biologists won’t tell me.

Society, for all its quirks,
follows a set of rules,
intuitively, I know some,
but how to write them up?

“It shows promise, it shows promise, it shows promise.”
And yet you leave it to wither!
Do you have any idea of the agony
of talent left untrained!?

Of vision divorced from realization?
Cut off, to goad, to promise,
and to crumble before reality –
over and over, illimitable!

This is the result
of forcing men to specialize –
we have unlimited potential,
but potential is not enough.