Not many eel poems around - here's one from Lars Gustafsson

The eel and the well

In old Scania there was a custom:

Young eels from the sea were let down

into the black depths of the wells.

These eels then spent their entire lives

imprisoned in the darkness of the deep wells.

They keep the water crystal-clear and clean.

When on occasions the well-eel comes up,

white, frighteningly large, caught in the pail,

blind and coiling in and out

of its body’s enigmas, unaware,

everyone hurries to submerge it again.

I often feel myself as being

not only in the well-eel’s stead

but well and eel at the same time.

Imprisoned in myself, but this self

already something else. I exist there.

And wash it clean with my twisting,

miry, white-bellied presence in the darkness.