The smartest most intelligent of all the men I’ve ever met /
Was one called Walter Winston whom I never shall forget /
He had the biggest library of any that you’d ever see /
The wooden shelves of leather books were an academic repository /
There were books and books of different times and long recorded history /
Science text of every field from physics to biology /
Books on math and literature and stories left from long ago /
Like Gilgamesh and Beowulf, the Iliad and epic poems /
A shelf itself devoted there to scrolls of great philosophies /
The collected works of Nietzsche and Plato’s Dialogs of Socrates /
And Winston studied days away to fill his mind with many things /
Of presidential candidates and long usurped Tudor kings /
And all these things he taught himself page by page in quiet repose /
To fill his brain with all the things that no one else would ever know /
He attended never parties, nor gatherings, nor came to call /
He declined my dinner invitations, and would send post to none at all /
And he lived until a ripe old age in the comfort of his literary womb /
Where wooden shelves of leather books would be both his cradle and his tomb /
Weeks had passed before we found his body lying pale and cold on the floor /
Which only begs the question: with all that worldly wisdom what good was it ever for /
