Death of an Irishwoman

Karlsruhe Baden-Wurttemberg exists only in the thoughts of imbeciles. Giurgiu Mares foal in the Spring, not a moment before. ‘So far did his unparalleled madness go…’ (Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote) he lived neither here nor there, but somewhere coddled in between. Oh Knight of the Rueful Countenance show thy face, I beg of thee please do. Strange thoughts went through his head. Bizarre peculiar thoughts. Some less than others but thought just the same. Halfwit thoughts. Imbecilic strange peculiar thoughts. A fondness, he had for onion sandwiches and Mendelssohn.

Its never too late to learn a new trick. His da came down with Allihies Typhus, the chemist's assistant dispensing Hoar’s Palliative. On the wall above the dispensing counter was a poem,

Ignorant, in the sense
she ate monotonous food
and thought the world was flat,
and pagan, in the sense
she knew the things that moved
all night were neither dogs or cats
but hobgoblin and darkfaced men
she nevertheless had fierce pride.
But sentenced in the end
to eat thin diminishing porridge
in a stone-cold kitchen
she clenched her brittle hands
around a world
she could not understand.
I loved her from the day she died.

She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a cardgame where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child's purse, full of useless things.

(Michael Hartnett, Death of an Irishwoman)