New Haven boasts the world’s smartest vagrants.
There was one, 
	old gopher all clad in leather,
Lecturing at the coffee shop on the green.

Said the longbowmen of England
	could outdistance cannon-shot, and
	the undergrads had no cause to doubt him.

I wondered then on the value of education_
What they were learning there
	would carry them
	no farther than the threshold.
The rest they would forget in time.

But Yale! Now, there was something!
That name would adorn them forever 
	and be their pass key
	to boardrooms and 
	law schools and 
	legislatures…

Did they know then? Did they? 
	Did the hobo playing professor?
What their parents knew when they 
	endowed them with these resumes_
The great hidden principle of meritocracy_
	That caveat that
	no high school
	guidance counselor
	seems to know or
	at least dares not mention_
That brilliance without status is nothing at all.  
And status without brilliance will always,
	Always, be good enough.