The Poem of the Little House at the Corner of Misapprehension and Marvel

During Napoleon iii’s coup d’état one of  his officers, Count de Saint-Arnaud, on being informed that a mob was approaching the Imperial Guard, coughed and exclaimed, with his hand across his throat, “Ma sacrée toux! (my damned cough).” But his lieutenant, understanding him to say “Massacrez tous! (massacre them all),” gave the order to fire, killing thousands—needlessly. —Guy Murchie “He was mortared to death.” A pity, how we misspeak and mishear. —Or “martyred”? Not that/coin-flip/either makes a difference to the increasingly cooler downtick of a corpse’s cells. “We heard the crazy mating joy of the loon across the water.” Yes, but what do