Seamus Heaney's poems, when I read them, were somewhat odd to me. They made sense, but at the same time they didn't make sense. I don't know if there were just certain parts that didn't make sense, or just how the stanza's and lines were broken up; yet a few poems spoke to me and got me thinking. One poem I found interesting is on page 982 called "Punishment." What first got me was the first two stanza's, which read as,
"I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
other neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs."
When I first read this, I read it as a man looking/watching a woman from a distance, who is wearing a halter top with the straps going around her neck and the wind blowing in her direction. "It blows her nipples to amber beads" makes me think that the wind was chilly, making her cold, hence having her nipples turn harder - or "to amber beads." (Sorry if this is inappropriate to say. It's just what it made me think of.)
But as this poem goes on, especially in the third stanza, I feel this poem gets a little dark; or perhaps the theme or underlying message is that this woman has passed away. The third stanza reads,
"I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs."
Is the tugging of the halter top due to the movement of the water (or bog?) that she's drowned in? Are her nipples turning to amber beads because she has been in the bog for a while? The weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs - are these all terms used for fishing or some kind of water area?
Someone has obviously done something to "punish" her because she is in a bog, her head is shaved, she is blindfolded with a soiled bandage, and has a "brain-firkin" on. (Brain-firkin = refers to a head covering on the dead body.")
It makes me wonder what did she do? Or what DIDN'T she do, for someone to punish her this way? She is referred to as a "little adulteress" - did she cheat on someone? Was she the "other woman?" Or was the person she was with finally get fed up with her? Or perhaps SHE was the one that was a good person, and whomever she was dating/married to had done something or had something to hide.
I feel a lot is said about her when Heaney writes,
"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 voyeur"
It makes me wonder, also, if perhaps she was a lady escort or (again, please excuse all the possible ideas wondering around in my head) a prostitute? Why else would the narrator of this poem call her an adulteress? Why else would "they punish" her? Or that she be undernourished? My conclusion/opinion is that obviously this female had been dealt a bad hand in life, was an adulteress, undernourished yet beautiful, but was found dead in a bog with a bag over her head because something major happened. That's why this poem by Heaney intrigues me; there are so many unanswered questions. Heaney even ends the poem saying, "who would connive/in civilized outrage/yet understand the exact/and tribal, intimate revenge." (Pg. 983) I definitely think the narrator and the woman are somehow intimately connected, whether they were dating or married, or perhaps they both had their own partners and were seeing each other on the side, hence the "intimate revenge." It makes me wonder if the possibility of the scenario was that the man/narrator was married, and she was his "other woman," who wanted him all to herself. He wanted his cake and eat it too, and didn't want to disrupt his married life, so he took her out by having a "civilized outrage," and growing her in a bog for nobody to find.
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