I’ve been feeling a disconnect with school lately. No desire to go. No desire to write essays or read short stories that bother me. To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing made me want the main character to get it over with faster and I don’t like that sort of ruthless attitude. Fake character but oh-so-annoying.
“Punishment” by Seamus Heaney is gorgeous.
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.
To be able to write something like that! I tried writing a poem based off the general idea but I don’t think it was successful. I’d never heard of people being killed in the bog or the later issue with the IRA – the shearing of the hair and so on – that prompted this poem. Very powerful.
I still love The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Sexually frustrated middle-aged man wanting a different life. What’s not to love? I especially think this part works effectively:
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
The collar mounting firmly to the chin and asserted by the simple pin are not the best parts of the poem but my attention was called to them recently and, guh, they’re great.
