A Nursery rhyme had been playing itself through his mind all day
the maddening kind of thing that will not let go, that mockingly ignores all commands of the conscious mind to cease and desist. The rhyme was:

The rain in Spain falls on the plain.
There is joy but also pain
but the rain in Spain falls on the plain


Times a sheet, life's a stain,
All things we know will change
and all those things remain the same,
but be ye mad or only sane,
the rain in Spain falls on the plain.


We walk in love but fly in chains
And the planes in Spain fall in the rain