Gratuitous display of erudition
A phrase I learned from Mr Smyth
As something to be eschewed
For one should always express modesty
For both practical and Christian-doctrinal reasons
But what of Milton and his Sminthean archer
But the poet was vox clamantis
Or rather Jeremiah under house arrest
And which is the right side of history
Muddy Waters examplar of the American Renaissance
Proclaimed himself the greatest man alive
And no reasonable person would gainsay that contention
For it arose in a poem and poetry is fiction
A made thing
Neither true nor false
But only decorous or indecorous
And Milton made the purely fictive move
Of enrolling the gods in a roster of demons
No fundamentalist he
Just as surely as he followed the Mantuan
And myself am in no wise averse to theft
Neither from the great masters
Nor from my secular obligations

Do I pity myself
Well then I pity myself
And perhaps my suffering is too paltry for pity
But how supercede the mechanical operation of the spirit
And more anxiously
Evade the peril of blunder
For though I open-carry the curricular certificates
And even preen as preceptor
I am not a learned man
And few are in any age
For learning is lovingly cultivated
And I have lacked devotion
To the beautiful and the good
And our age is more degraded than many
For it adulates with orgiastic frenzy
The gratuitous display of idiocy