Punishment

Poetry › Seamus Heany (1975)

“Punishment” confronts the tension between empathy and complicity as Heaney imagines an Iron Age woman executed for adultery and preserved in a bog. Reflecting on her suffering, he indicts himself—and his society—for remaining silent before violence both ancient and modern.

I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front. It blows her nipples 5 to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs. I can see her drowned body in the bog, 10 the weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs. Under which at first she was a barked sapling that is dug up 15 oak-bone, brain-firkin: her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring 20 to store the memories of love. Little adulteress, before they punished you you were flaxen-haired, 21 undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat, I almost love you but would have cast, I know, 25 the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeur of your brains exposed and darkened combs, your muscles’ webbing 30 and all your numbered bones: I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings, 35 who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge.

Introduction and Context

Seamus Heaney’s “Punishment” first appeared in his 1975 collection North, a volume that explores the relationship between the personal and the political, especially the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The poem was inspired by the discovery of bog bodies—iron-age corpses preserved in peatlands—particularly a young woman executed for adultery and unearthed in Windeby, Germany. Heaney transforms this archaeological image into a meditation on punishment, complicity, and empathy.

The poet imagines the girl’s suffering with visceral tenderness, “the halter at the nape of her neck,” yet acknowledges his own moral paralysis: he “would have cast... the stones of silence.” This admission situates Heaney between sympathy and guilt, torn between his human compassion and the tribal loyalties of his divided homeland. The “betraying sisters” he describes suggest contemporary Irish women tarred for fraternizing with British soldiers—Heaney’s moral and historical analog to the ancient execution.

“Punishment” thus participates in Heaney’s broader ethical inquiry throughout North: whether art can witness suffering without exploiting it, and whether understanding can exist without condemnation. Like the bog bodies themselves, the poem preserves a moment of violence within layers of moral ambiguity.

Questions for Consideration

1. How does Heaney use the image of the bog body to explore both ancient and modern violence? What symbolic work does the bog perform in the poem?
2. The speaker identifies himself as “the artful voyeur.” What does this self-description reveal about Heaney’s attitude toward art, empathy, and complicity?
3. What is the relationship between beauty and violence in “Punishment”? How does Heaney’s imagery of the woman’s body resist or invite aestheticization?
4. Consider the poem’s use of the second person (“Little adulteress”). How does this address shape our understanding of the speaker’s guilt or desire?
5. In what sense does the poem enact “civilized outrage” while still “understanding the exact and tribal, intimate revenge”? Can these two stances coexist?
6. Compare Heaney’s moral conflict here with that in “Casualty” or “The Strand at Lough Beg.” How do these poems negotiate the poet’s role as witness to political violence?
7. How might “Punishment” be read in dialogue with Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” or Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”? How do these poems treat the intersection of gender, body, and power?
8. In the final stanza, Heaney implicates himself in both ancient and modern punishments. What does this reveal about the poet’s understanding of history?
9. How does Heaney’s tone shift from empathy to self-indictment? What techniques (imagery, rhythm, enjambment) mark that transformation?
10. Is silence, as Heaney presents it, a form of complicity, resistance, or mourning?

Journal Prompts

1. Reflect on a time when you witnessed injustice or cruelty but felt powerless—or reluctant—to intervene. How might Heaney’s “stones of silence” describe that tension?
2. How does the poem’s physical imagery (“oak-bone,” “brain-firkin,” “amber beads”) create both fascination and discomfort? Write about a moment when beauty and horror coexisted for you.
3. Compare the tone of “Punishment” to that of “Clearances.” How does Heaney’s voice differ when addressing the personal versus the political?
4. The poem suggests that empathy can verge on voyeurism. Can one truly understand another’s suffering without objectifying it?
5. Consider Heaney’s line, “I who have stood dumb / when your betraying sisters... wept by the railings.” Write about the poet’s moral dilemma in witnessing violence—does understanding imply approval?
6. Explore how “Punishment” might function as an allegory for modern tribalism—political, religious, or cultural. What “tribes” still demand “intimate revenge” today?
7. Compare the treatment of the female body here to Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” or Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” How does gender shape the poem’s ethical tension?
8. Heaney’s “Punishment” is part elegy, part confession. How do the two modes interact? Is the poem mourning the girl, or the speaker’s own humanity?
9. The bog body is literally preserved by nature. What might Heaney be suggesting about poetry’s power to preserve memory, guilt, and history?
10. Write a brief creative imitation (8–12 lines) in which you address a historical figure or victim from the second person, as Heaney does, exploring your own complicity or distance.