The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 1/26/08

[BlueIris]

"The Tollund Man"

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head
The mild pods of his eye-lids
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach

Naked except for
The cap noose and girdle
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered ambushed
Flesh of labourers
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me driving
Saying the names

Tollund Grauballe Nebelgard
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost
Unhappy and at home.

—Seamus Heaney

[BlueIris]

1. Seamus Heaney was inspired to write a series of poems about the "bog people" of Jutland

by his 1969 discovery of the book, The Bog People, by Danish archaelogist, P.V. Glob. Heaney said this about The Bog People in 1975: "It was chiefly concerned with preserved bodies of men and women found in the bogs of Jutland, naked, strangled or with their throats cut, disposed under the peat since the early Iron Age times. ...argues convincingly that a number of these, and in particular, the Tollund Man, whose head is now preserved near Aarus in the museum of Silkeburg, were ritual sacrifices to the Mother Goddess, the goddess of the ground who needed new bridegrooms each winter to bed with her in her sacred place, in the spring. Take(n) in relation to the tradition of Irish political martyrdom for the cause whose icon is Kathleen No Houlihan , this is more than an archaic, barbarous rite: it is an archetypal pattern. And the unforgettable photographs of these victims blended in my mind with the photographs of atrocities, past and present, in the long rites of Irish political struggles."

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. wow.

thanks for this. The poem and the information about it.

Here is a pic of the Tollund Man

[BlueIris]

3. Yowza. Great pic.

Thanks for your continued patronage! My poetry breaks wouldn't be the same without you.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you do for me.

I am learning so much. I feel like I am taking a free online poetry course and I am the richer for it. You and RL's threads are the highlight of my day here at DU. :hug:

Side views of Tollund Man as he was found.


on edit: I don't mean to gush :blush:

[BlueIris]

5. OMG, how will I ever live up to that??

Thanks, Tuesday!

[RainDog]

6. I'll second that

if anyone ever wonders why someone should specialize in this or that, these threads are evidence of the benefit to others, in ways you'll surely never know. I'm sure I'm not the only one who reads without comment more often than not.

and...

I LOVE THIS POEM.

gawd, seamus wordsymth-ie, I lick your pen. (highest form of worship imo)

I love the carnal goddess incantation, the words that lift you up to a windowsill to see beyond your world.

I also happen to be fascinated with the bog discoveries in N. Europe.

On somewhat of the same idea - Kay Boyle, a contemporary of Hemingway, wrote a story about some hikers vacationing in a small village in the Alps who came across a body frozen in ice. The body is brought down to the village to identify, and the village learns it is the body of a man who was engaged to a woman in the town. She's now withered and gray. His body has been preserved like it was on that day they were hiking when he died.

[BlueIris]

7. Aren't the bog people COOL?

[RainDog]

8. stunning

like visits from the beyond. the opposite of Shelley's Ozymandias... someone goes out to look for breakfast and isn't seen for another, oh, 4000 or so years.

[truedelphi]

9. Great poem. Great pic.

And thank you, Tollund Man, w/o you these wouldn't be here now.

[BlueIris]

10. Kick.