BlueIris
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Wed Mar-19-08 03:29 PM
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The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 3/19/08 |
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"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 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-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.
—Seamus Heaney
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CaliforniaPeggy
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Wed Mar-19-08 04:01 PM
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The things we do to women, in the name of morals...
This is brilliant, and heartbreaking...
Thank you...
:cry:
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BlueIris
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Wed Mar-19-08 04:41 PM
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2. I've always wondered if Heaney regrets publishing this one. |
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He did take some heat for these poems back in the day, though it was more for the pro-Republican sentiments (Heaney was—is?—pro-Irish independance) than their misogyny.
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BlueIris
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Wed Mar-19-08 07:59 PM
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