The Toothmason, Part 1

Come, look down among these buttercup cottages,
Between tumble-tall walls and filigree fences,
Where spiders’ breaths mist like the passage of ages
As they nook in their crannies, darning defences.

In the lullaby boughs, all rank and file,
Sit row upon row of full-lidded fowl,
While above the moon does her best to beguile
Her way out from behind her crescent-cut cowl.

The crackling stitches that join twilight with day
Caress their way up these bark-clad spines;
They tinker their tips over daisies, pink-grey,
And tinkle and tune the frosted fern tines.

Still closer move in, to this solitary oak,
This tree whose demeanour is that of a guard,
His rank and his office sewn on his green cloak,
His armour, age-thickened and seasonally scarred.

Despite brittlebone roots and arthritic, cold boughs,
He stands tall and true, unafraid of the dark,
His eyes peering out under lichen-topped brows,
The odd tired rustle in his long-johns of bark.

And when he is sure that everything’s still,
That nothing and no one is up and about,
That the ink has dried on Owl’s feather quill,
And Weasel is hearth-side, nursing his gout;

That Badger is plumping his pillows of straw
While his wife tells stories to her somniac cubs;
And Farmer Froghazel, widowed and worn,
Sleeps lonely and basted in liniment rub;

Old Oak nods his head and, shutting his eyes,
Slowly inhales, and tendrils of mist
Bleed along through the air like will o’wisp lies,
And tattle-tale bulrushes shimmer and list.

After this breath, old Oak is quite still,
As he savours the flavour of this vintage of Dawn,
And having enjoyed a connoisseur’s thrill,
He stretches his back and creaks out a yawn.

And as somnolent whisper dies down to a sigh,
Borne high in this trickle of oakenwarm breeze,
Flits something else, like a glitterwork fly,
As bright as Venus yet as small as a pea.

And what is this infinitesimal sun
That flees from old oak like a dissident dream?
And why does it hurry so, as quick as a pun,
Trailing behind it an ephemeral beam?

It’s the Toothmason - as you so rightly have guessed -
Yet again late for his daily collection!
And on his list? First, is a molar bequest,
Left pillow-side due to excessive confection,

Then three cuspids, a front one or two,
And seven more molars: (results of a slip
In which a fresh beardless baker, unsure what to do,
Made the age-old error of reading “pebble” for “pip”.)

In a jerkin the colour of Wolf’s cunning eye,
And a hat that is knitted from rosemary fur,
With wings as thin as Mink’s alibi,
He lands on young nose-tips to see if they stir.

Through feet clad in moccasins of smooth termite hides,
He feels the mild measured rhythm of a pendulous snore,
As eyelids spin dreams of white-washed seasides,
Where children laugh fearful at waves on the shore.

Clearing the ridges of cartilage and bone,
The Toothmason glides over the cheek of this giant,
And softly as catkin and silent as stone,
He pilfers dentinely from his victims compliant.

And so he works on, till at last does he hear
The first tinkle, as far away fantasy shakes
From the lashes and hair and dreamt-about tears
Of bleary-eyed risers, as Day itself wakes.

Back goes our burglar, to Oak’s plaintive creaks,
Guiding behind him a quartet of moles
Who, with one on their back and two in their cheeks,
Ferry the teeth along underground holes.

Surfacing blindly below the great tree,
They spit the teeth into their relevant pile;
(Alas, due to not being able to see,
This part of their business can take quite a while.)

But when they are finished, they drop back in their holes,
And homeward they head on their shuffling way,
So they can light fires to dry mud from their soles,
And pretend not to yearn for the colour of day.

So one at a time, with the last of the dark,
The Mason bears teeth along the roots of the tree,
And once at the bole, through a hole in the bark,
Passes the pickings to the Tooth Gallery.

This hall of enamel fills a third of the bole,
Odd labelled shelves filled up with bone,
And under the floor, we see through the hole,
Is his whittled-out workshop, where he works all alone.

*

But turning our eye from this hole-in-the-wall
Of that most private of creatures, we are blinded by Dawn,
And from behind in the village, we hear the first calls
As morning arrives to a pageant of yawns.

Dreams have now died to give way to the Day,
And with blinking and bleary eyes fluttering wide,
Forgetting a lifetime where slumber held sway,
The villagers wake and are borne on the tide

Of ablutions and breakfast and rushing for doors;
Of mustn’t-be-lates and kisses on cheeks;
To the settling into the ten-a-day chores
And the whittling down of the work-a-day week.

And, here and there, under puzzlement’s brows,
Inquisitive fingers are lifted to mouths
To tentatively touch like worms on a browse
And make sure of what was, but isn’t there now.

‘My molar is gone!’ ‘My cuspid’s abroad!’
‘My canines both seem to have strayed!’
My front two are here, and the three in my jaw,
But my wisdoms are elsewhere delayed!’

New smiles are presented over sausage and eggs,
Fresh lisps are laughed at when shown,
While idling tongues can’t help but detect
Electrical vacancy where once there was bone.

‘Where do they go?’ ‘Why don’t they stay?’
‘When will my new one begin to sprout?’
The impossible Ws with which children assail
Their exhaustedly ignorant parents’ own doubts.

‘They fall up and become stars.’ ‘They had to move house.’
‘As soon as you start eating your greens.’
‘A green goblin...’ ‘Not that, a mischeivous mouse
Has taken them away to be cleaned.’

‘But they didn’t leave a ticket! How will they know
Where to return the tooth to its place?’
(To this kind of question, all parents will know,
There is but one answer. ‘You’re going to be late.’)

And so each child is left, bewildered, bereft,
Still curiously wondering aloud
The whys and the hows and the whens of such theft
That, from under his nose, can poach from his mouth.

‘It can’t be a mouse,’ states Reason in Shorts
As they stumble and hop towards classrooms and desks.
‘There’s far too much danger of a tail getting caught
And a mouse wouldn’t take such extravagant risks.’

‘So you think it’s a goblin?’ a Satchel asides,
While a Pigtail opines it’s an elf,
And Twin Caps both say, at the very same time,
That it is ‘probably almost anything else’.

And then the talk turns to the trials ahead,
To the tests and the teachers and the ticks of the clock,
To the playground trade-offs and the taunts yet unsaid
To the notes passed around and hidden in socks.

But there at the back, books held to her chest,
Is a solitary girl, her head bowed in thought.
Blue eyes and black hair above a long-skirted dress
That sways with her steps but never gets caught.

Her name is Lily, and though constantly quiet
Her curiosity could kill any number of cats,
And although she loves stories of goblins and giants
She can never rest easy without all the facts.

It can’t be a mouse, as a mouse is too fat;
And goblins and elves, I believe, don’t exist;
Our parents are innocent of both crime and the facts,
I’m sure it’s not them – so what have I missed?

Is it a spider, who hollows them out
As fridges for flies, to keep them on ice?
Is it the ghost of a gambling count
Who paints them with spots so he always has dice?

Are teeth a favourite amongst migrating birds
To take home as small souvenirs for the nest?
Or are they engraved with appropriate words
And used as the tombstones for Grasshopper’s rest?

And try as she might, Lily cannot settle
On who or what or when it might be,
So as she treads towards school, she gathers her mettle
And resolves to stay up that very night, and see.

*

Our Mason is frantic, and reaching for tools
To lay along his artisan bench,
He mutters out loud, ‘Belligerent fool!’
As he quickly unscrews the vice with a wrench.

‘“Build a castle,” she says, but has no idea
What such a task means to a man of my art!
“I’ll of course pay you well,” she says, “have no fear!”
While she sits on her throne with her whims and her farts!

Build a palace,” goes she, “of shimmering white
From which I and my kin can gleamingly rule!
With a spire, two minarets, a dome left and right,
And buttresses flying over glimmering pools!”’

He is of course cursing his sovereign queen,
The vicious, illustrious, luscious Queen Mab,
Who rules from the roots to the rock in between,
So beautiful, bountiful, belligerent, mad.

Our artisan heartlessly mumbles his words
Frustration at monarchs hamstringing his speech,
But again finds his voice, under which can be heard
The wrench and the vice as they give a last squeak.

‘It needs to be sought,’ he pauses and leans,
‘It needs to be checked for scratches and stains!
It has to be solid, it has to have sheen,
It must, most of all, have a pearly white grain.’

And off flies a curse to indulgences sweet,
All puddings and pies and caramelled fruits,
All lollipops, candies, all after-lunch treats,
All gingerbread men in burnt-sugar suits.

He mutters and mumbles, as his body winds down
And he breathes out his fears in anger’s disguise,
Hiding his lingering dread with a frown,
And purging his terror through scandalised eyes.

A profession as his is no easy science -
Such stealthy tooth-theft from Leviathans’ jaws!
Such brave, blatant burglary under noses of giants
While weathering wet storms of windy-warm snores!

But once science is over, it’s time for his art,
And so he calms muscles and mind with a moan
At that which supports him, while deep in his heart
He knows, and is glad, that this choice is his own.

For while he whinges his winnowy whines
And mutters his time-worn protests so old
He lays out apparati of wondrous design,
Unfolding them gently from bark-canvas rolls.

Hammers of jet of diminishing size,
And files made from slivers of tin,
The soft, hairy bodies of bluebottle flies
To smooth out the rasps of stickleback fin.

Chisels and awls with diamond-edged glint,
And quartz-crusted cloverleaves for corners too curt,
And spidersilk saws, dipped in soft-powdered flint,
With dried starlings’ beaks for delicate work:

That fabulous filigree for which the Mason is famed!
The exquisite engraving that twistingly winds
Around figures fantastic which it coilingly frames,
All cut into the tooth, and smoothed to a shine.