Punishment and Seamus Heaney

I was in a bookstore a while back, browsing the poetry section (stop, just stop), and remembered that there was a Seamus Heaney poem I was fond of that I could never remember the title of. I found some Heaney on the shelves and started flipping through, looking for the one I remembered, but I never found it.

I did, however, stumble across “Punishment”, which tore me open right there. I didn’t buy the collection it was in, because I own another one with almost all the same poems in it, but I wrote it down on a receipt, “Punishment, Don’t Forget”.

I found that receipt the other day cleaning out my bag and revisited the poem for the first time since finding it in that bookstore. I wanted to share it, and document it here, because it seriously kicks my ass. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[Does the "more" link work for you? Or do you have to click on the title to view the whole post?]

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 adultress,
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 voyeur

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.