Tooth

The great drain of the house
is a centre without clothes
where the eye deeps the mirror, a fished-out lake.

There is a signpost on the sea,
at the apex of Cape Leeuwin: one way Southern Ocean,
the other Indian. You can continue with your eyes

its line dividing handless sea.
Who owns herself, the self she caused
carefully all day? The hand

must travel a long way
around its corner to the face which watches as the hand approaches.
The dream-book says that when you dream

a house you dream your mind.
You dream rooms they are divisions in your mind.
When you dream your body

it means rooms full of people.
What can you say of her? that she was prone
to apprehension

of a largeness when brushing
against another person – something like the parting
of curtains or clouds and then

the doors of the wind would close, leaving
her looking at a face with one.
Who sees her self, the self that earns

its rest and is unwound
by dreams, her life the racing bobbin her frozen foot
chases down till the last inch leaps free?

Teeth dissolve in the dream like a cliff-edge
and your body’s falling image stamps
the eyes of the horrified tourists.

Dream dissolves in light but there she is
in the mirror you rent with the house.
It’s wrong to say you see yourself:

both eyes look at one eye and then they swap.