knowledge

when the worth of truth is tried by ignorance,
put through the crucible of defense,
worn down with sandpaper and judgment,
snatched from the inquisitor by the expert,
coddled by those who have in order to prove a point
to those who have not;

if the merit of knowledge is completeness
at the cost of enthusiasm, curiosity, inquiry,
and if the world waits only for tomes of certainty,
patiently or impatiently making life a matter of facts;

if accuracy comes to mean expertise,
and if there is a direct correlation between
that which you seek to understand
and that which you majored in college,
where scholars and ameteurs must be experts
before they can study a subject,
and knowledge itself is turned on its head
instead of on its feet;

then what do we do with ourselves,
when we are cloistered, boxed, pidgen-holed,
without hope of escape,
because only the locksmiths can ever learn how to use a key?