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Note on The Poisons of Spring  

This has to be read, up to ‘wake’, as the fragment of dream.  ‘Lost us’ doesn’t have a grammatical subject, though the last line will supply a semantic one.  As householders have to, I’d wiped out a colony of ants which threatened our kitchen and bathroom.  We use a tin of poison with holes in the side.  Then I had a dream, partly erotic, partly about the ants.  In the morning I gazed out of the kitchen window at the honeysuckle and a squirrel in the chestnut tree, and why my dream had linked the killing of ants with the loss of ‘indecent nights’ I had absolutely no clue.  Had wonderful things vanished, or do guilt and frustration make a good pair?

Alan Marshfield

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