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Note on Anniversary

The style here is so dreamy and old-fashioned, so sub-Yeatsian, that I’m almost unwilling to include it.  I destroy the jottings I really shudder at, but whenever anything passes the shudder test and when, in doing revisions of it I feel not so embarrassed as I thought I might be, I say, ‘Hold on, the piece arrived like this!’  If I still have a sneaking admiration for it, it’s retained.  This poem happens to be the only one I’ve ever fully worked out in my head whilst lying in bed in the dark, having suddenly awoken at night.  As you can see, it alludes to an erotic dream but really speaks sadly of the marital position ‘back to back, tonight and every night’ (Peter Porter, Sex and the Over Forties).

Algae are mainly aquatic and plant-like, varying from microscopic cells to giant seaweeds.  Some, like animals, can move and eat food, and a subgroup of these are bioluminescent, glowing at night in tropical seas.

Alan Marshfield

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