she sits in a bar,

a beautiful dame,

her eyes red as the blood her father bled:

years of guilt.

her mother cried pints of sorrow.

now, she sits with an Irishwoman’s gloom over her head,

hands hanging like misery’s allegory:

the perpetual sin, the Irishwoman says,

drunk in the light of her own melancholy

and asks for a dance, oh that beautiful dame,

stepping on lit cigarettes and burning berets,

they dance,

misery’s allegory:

the perpetual sin.