August 1, 2008
Absolute Knowledge
Absolute knowledge have I none
But my aunt’s washer woman’s son
Heard a policeman on his beat
Say to a laborer on the street
That he got a letter just last week
Hand written in the finest Greek
From a Chinese collie in Timbuktu
Who said the blacks in Cuba knew
Of a colored man in a Texas town
Who got it straight from a circus clown
That a man in Klondike heard the news
From a gang of South American Jews
About someone in Borneo
Who heard of a man who claimed to know
Of a swell society dame
Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prose that her seventh husband’s sister
Has stated in a printed piece
That she has a son who has a friend
Who knows when the date the world will end.
Suddenly and without warning, on a bright day in September almost seven years ago, two airliners crashed into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, leaving devastating destruction and death. In Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania, two other airliners came down, also as a result of a terrorist plot. These tragedies snuffed out the lives of thousands of men, women, and children. Evaporated were well-laid plans for pleasant futures. Instead, there were tears of sorrow and cries of pain from wounded souls.