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 coolie in Timbuktu
Who said that a son in Cuba knew
Of a colored gent in a Texas town
Who got it straight from a circus clown
That a man in Klondike heard the news
From a band of Smooth American Jews
About some fellow from Borneo
Who knew a man who claimed to know
Of a hermit living beside a lake
Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prove that a cousin’s sister’s neice
Has said in a finely written piece
That she has a son who knows a friend
Who knows the date the world will end.