My dentist, it has to be said, is both painless and expensive. The one quality probably dependent on the other. So the poem that follows is fictional, but based on a truth, that pain can clarify the heart of existence.

A visit to the dentist

It has to be filled. A hairline in the old amalgam
Uncomfortably sensitive to sweetness.
So the drill whines in the cavity,
There’s a whiff of burning, an avalanche
As I desperately scan the ceiling poster.
A peasant amid goats, lulled by a cow-bell,
On a rocky coast where marble effigies,
Wreathed in weed, sway to and fro with the tides.
Old gods, blind, toothless now, who have taken
Their stained offerings with them, and fled,
Their interventions inept. The drill stops.
Deeper, deeper blue sea have I rarely seen,
My knuckles whiter now than those sands.
I strain my jaw open again. Amongst the ivory
What discoveries? Liquid ruby cabouchons
Capturing fractured light there? In the depth
Of the molar. In the glowing heart of pain.