Poem: On seeing a painting of Aquinas

Aquinas the ox,
enthroned in some grand seat,
angels swarming ’round him,
pouring wisdom
into his tonsured gourd.

How saintly a thinker,
that men today
should aspire to his level of scholarly output,
imagining angels
to be swarming ’round their heads as well

as they take out a second mortgage
for some distant graduate school