I could bite on Mr Heaney’s
lust-sight of her

of lost flesh

of navvy-dug amber nipples

under hard-weighed stones
over her cracked oak-bones

which are not
my spoken words

Language is not my tight weave
of Sussex-ness

no fluttergrub’s spade
to turn my empty laine of chalkland

His words are kissed intimacies
in his Castledawson rooting –
in peat-dug dampness
of vowel-soundings

If only we could speak such –
with such – reverence and blind love
of a long-buried bog-stickiness –

then this would be my
other language –
one not yet fully known