Showing posts with label Seamus Heaney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seamus Heaney. Show all posts
Punishment by Seamus Heaney
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Poetry
,
Seamus Heaney
Punishment
Seamus Heaney
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.
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