409. Poem: Knowing How to Do It

Man, I said, that's the  only thing we can fall back on after we've taken continents away from people and made them slaves that we know how to do things and that may not make up for our crimes but at least it keeps those people from giving up the knowing we passed on which is good for them and maybe, just maybe, makes them a little grateful and makes some of them maybe feel a little less high on their horse because gratitude heh heh lets us say aren't you accomplices, complicit in the crime and if they say certainly not we're victims we ask well do you want us to give back the continent and return the slaves' children to theirs and they say that's impossible now and we say yes and everybody knows it and a few know what a rare privilege you enjoy to be able to have the benefits of another's crime without being complicit because you would oh so willingly give the benefits back but alas you can't and we say every culture has a name for that and historians will know it and learn it and stick it under your saddle and maybe you will come down and join the accomplice party with us and we will all lift a glass to ahem American know-how but before we get on our horse you can ask how much do you know about doing funerals and I say oh oh I've known child after child who through long years had learned enough about a person as wife and mother to fill a book of poetry but the best they could say when they the center of the service got up to speak was that she was "real special" and the grateful primitives can say so you don't do ceremony or language very well do you and ask us to listen to one of their children:

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
 Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.