Frodo Soup

The Man He Killed BY  THOMAS HARDY "Had he and I but met              By some old ancient inn,  We should have sat us down to wet              Right many a nipperkin!              "But ranged as infantry,              And staring face to face,  I shot at him as he at me,              And killed him in his place.              "I shot him dead because —              Because he was my foe,  Just so: my foe of course he was;          ...

Windeby Girl found in 1951 by peat cutters in Northern Germany Punishment by Seamus Heaney (1975) 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 voyeuur 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, ...