Seamus Heaney Poem 1

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 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.

Seamus Heaney uses dark imagery and diction to convey a regretful and disappointed tone in betrayal and punishment of a woman.
Heaney uses images of a sensual woman to depict the speaker's intimate connection and relationship to the dead woman. He describes the nape of her neck, naked front, nipples to amber beads, and frail rigging of her ribs. This visual imagery suggests that the speaker has a personal connection to the woman to know the details of her body so exactly. Also in the first and third stanza he says I can feel... and I can see.... this sensory details imply that the speaker emphathysizes with the dead woman and feels regret for the loss of her. More so Heaney uses diction to discuss the vulnerability of this woman: the frail rigging and then the idea that the cold wind blows against her implying the frailty if even the weather can hurt her and make her uncomfortable.
Heaney also uses dark nature images such as the bog, weighing stone, and floating rods and boughs, this images are depicted along with her drowned body. These images of nature suggest that although he is regretful of the loss of intimate relationship it is a natural thing to happen. To the speaker, the punishment and her death was natural and necessary and that is why her body can be found among the nature of the bog. Furthermore he compares her to a sapling, suggesting that if she was given the option to live she may have blossomed into a magnificent women, full of life. But now she is dead, a shaved head like a stubble of corn... this implies that she is bald and bland connoting empty and nothing as well as the black corn makes the simile that there is death and decay.
The speaker has some anger and compassion as he addresses her little adulteress, as though that were a pet name. He also described her once as being undernourished connoting unfulfilled suggesting that she had potential but never saw it through and that disappoints him for he was beautiful. He also calls her a poor scapegoat suggesting that maybe she was not as guilty as everyone believed, but it didn't matter because he didn't love her although they were intimate because he too allowed the stones to be cast to silence her, or let her be killed. Although he still desires her even in her death which suggests some regretfulness, when he calls himself her artful voyeur or her dead body. But once again he stood dumb, or did nothing, and let the woman's sisters, who also were apart of the act that lead the woman to her death, cry. To him it was appropriate, civilized, for her punishment to be carried out, it was tribal or traditional and accepted, and personally for him very intimate revenge; he regrets it had to be this way but accepted it for her adultery.
Seamus Heaney describes a speaker affected by the adultery of a woman in Ireland, but also the woman represents Ireland herself and the betrayal and death consuming the people due to the conflicts of religion.