Punishment
I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.
I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.
Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:
her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring
to store
the memories of love.
Little adulteress,
before they punished you
you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,
I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeuur
of your brain’s exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles’ webbing
and all your numbered bones:
I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
(Seamus Heaney)
What prompts you to post this terrible but beautiful poem now, I ask myself, Tom. If I could believe in prayer I’d pray for northern Ireland now in the wake of the UK’s referendum on the EU.
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Hi John,
I have been reading PV Glob’s THE BOG PEOPLE, on which Heaney based his series of ‘poems from the bog’, which were heavily influenced by the NI ‘troubles’. I guess I might have subconsciously linked the brexit vote to a renewed possibility of more ‘troubles’ there because of the decision. There’s a lot of ‘nationalism’ around at the present time.
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