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And lo, he whispereth of “diversificacion” as though it were the secret name of God Himselfe, bidding thee sow thy shekels in seven rivers, eight marshes, nine dung-heaps, and one great bottomlesse pit wherein the Leviathan of Losses lieth ever snoring; and when the seven rivers run dry, the eight marshes turn to quicksand, the nine dung-heaps catch fire, and the bottomlesse pit belcheth back only thy own shrieks, then he noddeth sagely and muttereth “Patience, young fool, forsooth the wheel turneth, though none knoweth whither, nor why, nor with what greasie axle it creaketh.”
Yea, and when the apprentices cry “What then is the true path, O great bearded leech upon the purse of the commonweale?”, he answereth with a mighty rolling of the r’s and a puffing of the cheeks that soundeth thuswise: “Royalties! Royalties from the very ayre! From the vapour of the morning mist! From the sneeze of a passing goose! From the shadow cast by a cloud upon a turnip-field where no man hath planted! And yet do thou first perform thy due diligence, which is to say, stare long into the looking-glass of thine own terror until thy knees knock like castanets in a morris dance gone mad.”
And if thou press him further, asking “But how, sirrah, shall we know the morrow’s price of the goose-sneeze royalty?”, he turneth purple as a pickled beetroot and crieth “Term sheets! Cap tables! EBITDA! Moats! Runway! Hockey-stick growth! Pivot! Burn rate! Unicorn! Exit strategy!”—all of which are but the cackling of hens in a burning hen-house, or the babble of a Bedlamite who hath swallowed too many dictionaries and now vomiteth them forth in no order known to man or angel.
Thus the matter goeth on and on, circling like a lame mill-wheel that hath lost both its stones and its hope, grinding nothing into nothing, producing only dust, chaff, the smell of old suet, the distant wail of shipwreckt merchants, and the occasional hiccough of a philosopher who hath drunk too deeply of his own ink.
And so it continueth, without beginning, without end, without middle, without sense, without mercy, without so much as a single farthing of meaning to lay upon the plate of reason, amen and amen and amen again until the very word “amen” itself grow weary and creep away to hide behind the arras with the moths and the forgotten oaths of blacks and jews.