Stephan Bann provides an explanation of the poem in the accompanying leaflet as follows. Thermidor was the month in the French Revolutionary calendar when the summer heat was its most intense, and the grain at its ripest. It was also the month, in 1794, when Robespierre and his followers met their deaths at the guillotine. In the image of this poem, the abrupt cleavage of the word, THER MIDOR, and of the figured sheaf of flowers, suggest the termination of the revolution in its Jacobian sense. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.