Mr.
Pugh, in the schoolhouse opposite,
takes up the morning tea to
Mrs.
Pugh and whispers
on the stairs.
Here's your arsenic, dear,
and your weed -killer biscuit.
I've rotted your parakeet,
I've spat in the vases,
I've put cheese in the mouth
-holes.
Here's your...
Nice tea, dear.
Too much sugar.
You haven't tasted it yet, dear.
Too much milk, then.
Admit it,
Jenkins, that it's poetry.
Why, yes, dear.
Then it's time to get up.
Give me my glasses.
No, not my reading glasses.
I want to look out.
I want to see.
In the blind, drawn,
dark dining room of
Schoolhouse, dusty and echo
ing as a dining room in a vault,
Mr. and
Mrs.
Pugh are silent over cold,
grainy cottage pie.
Mr.
Pugh reads, as he forks the shroud meat in,
from the lives of the great poisoners.
He has found a plain,
brown paper cover on the book.
Slyly, between slow mouthfuls,
he sidespies up at
Mrs.
Poole, poisons her with his eye,
He goes on reading.
He underlines certain passages and smiles
in secret.
Do not read a table,
Mrs.
Pugh.
She swallows a digestive tablet
as big as a horse's
Washing it down with clouded
pea -soup water.
Some persons were brought
up in pig -styles.
Pigs don't read a table,
Bitterly she flicks dust from the broken court.
It settles on the pie in a thin, gnat -wing.
Pigs can't read, my dear.
I know one who can.
Alone in the hissing laborat
ory of his wishes,
Mr.
Pugh minces among bad -bats
and geroborums,
tiptoes through spinnies of murdering herbs,
agony dancing in his crucibles,
and mixes, especially for
Mrs.
Pugh, the venomous potage
unknown to toxicologists.
She will scald and bite her finger
until her ears fall off like figs,
Her toes grow big and black as balloons,
and steam comes screaming out of her neck.
Mrs.
Pugh smiles.
An icicle forms in the cold
air of the dining vault.