Little hole little well
of dark staining the lacquer
of my tooth little confessor
coming close and coming close

why are you pursuing me
interrogator of the nerve
in its garden
of blood and moisture its long sleep

what secrets can my nerve
confess to you what do you want
of us your drill
and file still thrillingly in play

and how shall I appease you
a god’s dark eye
going to and fro and going
even in the secret places?

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Fiona Sampson has received the Newdigate Prize, a Cholmondeley Award, Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales and the Society of Authors, various Poetry Book Society commendations, and international prizes in Macedonia and the US. She has twice been shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prizes. She is published in thirty-seven languages. She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Roehampton. Her Selected Poems recently appeared in the US, China, Romania and Ukraine. This spring she publishes The Catch (Chatto) and this autumn, Lyric Cousins: Musical Form in Poetry.