Poem of the Week: ‘Punishment’ by Seamus Heaney
27 January 2025
Our poem of the week is ‘Punishment’ from North, Seamus Heaney’s seminal 1975 collection, which refracts the troubled history of Ireland through a broader account of the histories, myths and peoples of Northern Europe.
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 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.
Copyright © The Estate of Seamus Heaney, 1975. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
Read all our poems of the week.
North, by Seamus Heaney, is an intensely worked and deep account of the people, history and landscape of Ireland, from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.