I am lying in a bog with an Incubus
An Incubus of Seamus Heaney
Demonic infant Seamus Heaney
Feeding on my breast
It is the White Mare of the Night
Come at Midnight
Rider on an Ashen Horse
Galloping through the Fright
Squatting on my frail ribs
I cannot pull out of the bog
Or out of the wolf-toothed dream
The wolves are always howling
And I must run with them like Artemis
Diana who runs with the wolves
I cry to my spouse in that half-state
Of paralyzed limbs when the dread
Has settled on one‘s breast
And the breath is as absent as the voice
And the legs can run no more
Help me, Help me; Pull me out
I cannot move
I saw the Tollund Man
He has the Face of my Father
That River of Blood runs through me
Cliffs and icy fjords slice me until
I am swallowed in the Danish fen
So afraid of that Pale Horseman
Seamus Heaney was not
So here I shall lie with an Incubus on my chest
In a peat bog where I may not have been seen
Barely glimpsed, not noticed in the quaking muck
Sucked downward and hidden by the sphagnum moss
A voice without an echo
Seamus Heaney smiles at me
From the cover of his book
And I see it is the Tollund Man*
Perfectly preserved, prehistoric
The Man sacrificed and placed
In the peat bog, eyes closed
Beatific smile in rapture
Embraced by the primevol ooze
Reunited with the darkness
Blessed