#half hanged mary

[selkiewife]

All lines from "Half-Hanged Mary" by Margaret Atwood | Reek/Theon Greyjoy from A Song of Ice and Fire by CrimsonCraftsman | Judas Iscariot by Sascha Schneider | Forgotten Legends Tarot, THE HANGED MAN by Velga North | "Deterioration of Mind Over Matter" by Otto Rapp | Godswood concept art by Kim Pope for Game of Thrones | "Laughing Fool" by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen | "Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette" by Vincent van Gogh | Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy in "The Dragon and the Wolf," Episode 7, Season 7, Game of Thrones

#theon greyjoy #margaret atwood #half hanged mary #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #game of thrones #obsessed with this poem #mary webster #web weaving #web weave #my first web weaving attempt #theongreyjoyedit #theongreyjoydaily #tw disturbing imagery #tw blood #tw skull

[derangedrhythms]

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House; from ‘Half-Hanged Mary'

TEXT ID: The words boil out of me, coil after coil of sinuous possibility. The cosmos unravels from my mouth, all fullness, all vacancy.

#margaret atwood #morning in the burned house #half hanged mary #poetry #excerpts #u

[pandorabox82]

Had no clue the Margaret Atwood wrote poetry until I stumbled upon today’s poem. It is haunting and brilliant and amazing. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.

#poetry reading #spooky poetry #my voice #my video #Half Hanged Mary #Margaret Atwood #Youtube

[aemondonebrow]

I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin.

Margaret Atwood, “Half-Hanged Mary” from Morning in the Burned House

#margaret atwood #half hanged mary #poem #poetry #quote #quotes #morning in the burned house

[tomtefairytaleblog]

That post I made earlier about Bluebeard and Gilles de Rais and how it ties back to Fate/Grand Order reminded me about Margaret Atwood’s poem “Half-Hanged Mary.”

For those who don’t know, the poem is based on the story of a woman in Massachusetts in the late 1600s - but before the Salem Witch Trials - who was accused of witchcraft and hanged. However, to the shock/disappointment of her accusers, she survived the hanging, and lived for some time afterwards.

I bring it up because I’m playing through the Hundred Years’ War section of FGO, and the conflict (as it appears in the beginning anyway) is that due to the timeline being altered, Jeanne d’Arc came back to life as a witch (Jeanne Alter) who wants to burn France down. She’s explicitly referred to as the “Dragon Witch” by one soldier the protagonist and Mash meet, and there’s even a scene where Pierre Cauchon (who played a part in Jeanne’s death) reacts with horror when he realizes she’s returned.

It calls to mind those two lines in Atwood’s poem that go “Before, I was not a witch. / But now I am one.”

#fate grand order #joan of arc #jeanne d'arc #jeanne alter #half hanged mary #margaret atwood #poetry #witch rials #history #hundred years' war #random thoughts #text

[halfmaiarr]

#half hanged mary #margaret atwood #mary hadley #poem edit #poetry #american history #witch #witches

[neopetacc436]

The cosmos unravel from my mouth

All fullness/all vacancy.

#half hanged mary

[hermionegranger]

surprise,
 surprise:  I 
was 
still 
alive.

-Margaret Atwood

#Half Hanged Mary #Margaret Atwood #feminism #my edit

[adrasteiax]

Faith, Charity, and Hope are three dead angels falling like meteors (...) across the profound blank sky of Your face.

Margaret Atwood, from Half-Hanged Mary in “Morning In The Burned House”

#poetry #margaret atwood #half hanged mary #morning in the burned house #literature #poem #lit #from my collection

[milky-honee]

Half-hanged Mary

This poem is based upon a true story.

"Half-hanged Mary" was Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft in the 1680's in a Puritan town in Massachusetts and hanged from a tree - where, according to one of the several surviving accounts, she was left all night. It is known that when she was cut down she was still alive, since she lived for another fourteen years.)One of Mary Webster’s descendants is the now well-known Canadian novelist and poet, Margaret Atwood, who wrote a poem, “Half-Hanged Mary,” (1995) about her notorious ancestor, and one of her most popular novels,

The Handmaid’s Tale

(1985), is dedicated to her.  The poem has also been made into several stage productions and interpretations.  Atwood’s poem is in sections, each chronicling an hour of Mary’s hanging from the tree, beginning at 7 at night and concluding at 8 the next morning.

HALF-HANGED MARY   by Margaret Atwood

7pm

Rumour was loose in the air

hunting for some neck to land on.

I was milking the cow,

the barn door open to the sunset.

I didn't feel the aimed word hit

and go in like a soft bullet.

I didn't feel the smashed flesh

closing over it like water

over a thrown stone.

I was hanged for living alone

for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin,

tattered skirts, few buttons,

a weedy farm in my own name,

and a surefire cure for warts;

Oh yes, and breasts,

and a sweet pear hidden in my body.

Whenever there's talk of demons

these come in handy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8pm

The rope was an improvisation.

With time they'd have thought of axes.

Up I go like a windfall in reverse,

a blackend apple stuck back onto the tree.

Trussed hands, rag in my mouth,

a flag raised to salute the moon,

old bone-faced goddess, old original,

who once took blood in return for food.

The men of the town stalk homeward,

excited by their show of hate,

their own evil turned inside out like a glove,

and me wearing it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9pm

The bonnets come to stare,

the dark skirts also,

the upturned faces in between,

mouths closed so tight they're lipless.

I can see down into their eyeholes

and nostrils. I can see their fear.

You were my friend, you too.

I cured your baby, Mrs.,

and flushed yours out of you,

Non-wife, to save your life.

Help me down? You don't dare.

I might rub off on you,

like soot or gossip. Birds

of a feather burn together,

though as a rule ravens are singular.

In a gathering like this one

the safe place is the background,

pretending you can't dance,

the safe stance pointing a finger.

I understand. You can't spare

anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl

against the cold,

a good word. Lord

knows there isn't much

to go around. You need it all.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10pm

Well God, now that I'm up here

with maybe some time to kill

away from the daily

fingerwork, legwork, work

at the hen level,

we can continue our quarrel,

the one about free will.

Is it my choice that I'm dangling

like a turkey's wattles from his

more then indifferent tree?

If Nature is Your alphabet,

what letter is this rope?

Does my twisting body spell out Grace?

I hurt, therefore I am.

Faith, Charity, and Hope

are three dead angels

falling like meteors or

burning owls across

the profound blank sky of Your face.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12 midnight

My throat is taut against the rope

choking off words and air;

I'm reduced to knotted muscle.

Blood bulges in my skull,

my clenched teeth hold it in;

I bite down on despair

Death sits on my shoulder like a crow

waiting for my squeezed beet

of a heart to burst

so he can eat my eyes

or like a judge

muttering about sluts and punishment

and licking his lips

or like a dark angel

insidious in his glossy feathers

whispering to me to be easy

on myself. To breathe out finally.

Trust me, he says, caressing

me. Why suffer?

A temptation, to sink down

into these definitions.

To become a martyr in reverse,

or food, or trash.

To give up my own words for myself,my own refusals.To give up knowing.

To give up pain.

To let go.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 a.m.

Out of my mouths is coming, at some

distance from me, a thin gnawing sound

which you could confuse with prayer except that

praying is not constrained.

Or is it, Lord?

Maybe it’s more like being strangled

than I once thought. Maybe it’s

a gasp for air, prayer.

Did those men at Pentecost

want flames to shoot out of their heads?

Did they ask to be tossed

on the ground, gabbling like holy poultry,

eyeballs bulging?

As mine are, as mine are.

There is only one prayer; it is not

the knees in the clean nightgown

on the hooked rug.

I want this, I want that.

Oh far beyond.

Call it Please. Call it Mercy.

Call it Not yet, not yet,

as Heaven threatens to explode

inwards in fire and shredded flesh, and the angels caw.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 a.m.

wind seethes in the leaves around

me the trees exude night

birds night birds yell inside

my ears like stabbed hearts my heart

stutters in my fluttering cloth

body I dangle with strength

going out of the wind seethes

in my body tattering

the words I clench

my fists hold No

talisman or silver disc my lungs

flail as if drowning I call

on you as witness I did

no crime I was born I have borne I

bear I will be born this is

a crime I will not

acknowledge leaves and wind

hold on to me

I will not give in

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6 a.m.

Sun comes up, huge and blaring,

no longer a simile for God.

Wrong address. I’ve been out there.

Time is relative, let me tell you

I have lived a millennium.

I would like to say my hair turned white

overnight, but it didn’t.

Instead it was my heart;

bleached out like meat in water.

Also, I’m about three inches taller.

This is what happens when you drift in space

listening to the gospel

of the red hot stars.

Pinpoints of infinity riddle my brain,

a revelation of deafness.

At the end of my rope

I testify to silence.

Don’t say I’m not grateful.

Most will only have one death.

I will have two.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8 a.m.

When they came to harvest my corpse

(open your mouth, close your eyes)

cut my body from the rope,

surprise, surprise,

I was still alive.

Tough luck, folks,

I know the law:

you can’t execute me twice

for the same thing. How nice.

I fell to the clover, breathed it in,

and bared my teeth at them

in a filthy grin.

You can imagine how that went over.

Now I only need to look

out at them through my sky-blue eyes.

They see their own ill will

staring them in the forehead

and turn tail.

Before, I was not a witch.

But now I am one.

Later

My body of skin waxes and wanes

around my true body,

a tender nimbus.

I skitter over the paths and fields,

mumbling to myself like crazy,

mouth full of juicy adjectives

and purple berries.

The townsfolk dive headfirst into the bushes

to get out of my way.

My first death orbits my head,

an ambiguous nimbus,

medallion of my ordeal.

No one crosses that circle.

Having been hanged for something

I never said,

I can now say anything I can say.

Holiness gleams on my dirty fingers,

I eat flowers and dung,,

two forms of the same thing, I eat mice

and give thanks, blasphemies

gleam and burst in my wake

like lovely bubbles.

I speak in tongues,

my audience is owls.

My audience is God,

because who the hell else could understand me?

The words boil out of me,

coil after coil of sinuous possibility.

The cosmos unravels from my mouth,

all fullness, all vacancy

#poem #half hanged mary #witch #witch craft #salem #massachusetts

[derangedrhythms]

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House; from ‘Half-Hanged Mary'

TEXT ID: a flag raised to salute the moon, old bone-faced goddess, old original, who once took blood in return for food.

#margaret atwood #morning in the burned house #half hanged mary #poetry #excerpts #moon

[aemondonebrow]

I’m about three inches taller. This is what happens when you drift in space listening to the gospel of the red-hot stars. Pinpoints of infinity riddle my brain, a revelation of deafness.

Margaret Atwood, “Half-Hanged Mary” from Morning in the Burned House

#quote #quotes #margaret atwood #morning in the burned house #half hanged mary #poem #poetry

[the-frozen-city]

Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one.

Half-Hanged Mary, Margaret Atwood

#half hanged Mary #margaret atwood #before I was not a witch #but now I am one

[carolinefindsrescources]

Sun comes up, huge and blaring, no longer a simile for God. Wrong address. I’ve been out there.

Margaret Atwood, Half Hanged Mary

#Margaret Atwood #Half hanged Mary

[whisperthatruns]

7 p.m. Rumour was loose in the air, hunting for some neck to land on. I was milking the cow, the barn door open to the sunset. I didn't feel the aimed word hit and go on in like a soft bullet. I didn't feel the smashed flesh closing over it like water over a thrown stone. I was hanged for living alone, for having blues eyes and a sunburned skin, tattered skirts, few buttons, a weedy farm in my own name, and a surefire cure for warts. Oh yes, and breasts, and a sweet pear hidden in my body. Whenever there's talk of demons these come in handy.

8 p.m. The rope was an improvisation. With time they'd have thought of axes. Up I go like a windfall in reverse, a blackened apple stuck back onto the tree. Trussed hands, rag in my mouth, a flag raised to salute the moon, old bone-faced goddess, old original, who once took blood in return for food. The men of the town stalk homeward, excited by their show of hate, their own evil turned inside-out like a glove, and me wearing it. 9 p.m. The bonnets come to stare, the dark skirts also, the upturned faces in between, mouths closed so tight they're lipless. I can see down into their eyeholes and nostrils. I can see their fear. You were my friend, you too, I cured your baby, Mrs., and flushed yours out of you, Non-wife, to save your life. Help me down? You don't dare. I might rub off on you, like soot or gossip. Birds of a feather burn together, though as a rule ravens are singular. In a gathering like this one the safe place is the background, pretending you can't dance, the safe stance pointing a finger. I understand. You can't spare anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl against the cold, a good word. Lord knows there isn't much to go around. You need it all. 10 p.m. Well God, now that I'm up here, with maybe some time to kill, away from the daily fingerwork, legwork, work at the hen level, we can continue our quarrel, the one about free will. Is it my choice that I'm dangling like a turkey's wattle from this more than indifferent tree? If Nature is Your alphabet, what letter is this rope? Does my twisting body spell out Grace? I hurt, therefore I am. Faith, Charity, and Hope are three dead angels falling like meteors or burning owls across the profound blank sky of Your face. 12 midnight My throat is taut against the rope choking off words and air; I'm reduced to knotted muscle. Blood bulges in my skull, my clenched teeth hold it in; I bite down on despair. Death sits on my shoulder like a crow waiting for my squeezed beet of a heart to burst so he can eat my eyes or like a judge muttering about sluts and punishment and licking his lips or like a dark angel insidious in his glossy feathers whispering to me to be easy on myself. To breathe out finally. Trust me, he says, caressing me. Why suffer? A temptation, to sink down onto those definitions. To become a martyr in reverse, or food, or trash. To give up on my own words for myself, my own refusals. To give up knowing. To give up pain. To let go. 2 a.m. Out of my mouth is coming, at some distance from me, a thin gnawing sound which you could confuse with prayer except that praying is not constrained. Or is it, Lord? Maybe it's more like being strangled than I once thought. Maybe it's a gasp for air, prayer. Did those men at Pentecost want flames to shoot out of their heads? Did they ask to be tossed on the ground, gabbling like holy poultry, eyeballs bulging? As mine are, as mine are. There is only one prayer; it is not the knees in the clean nightgown on the hooked rug. I want this, I want that. Oh far beyond. Call it Please. Call it Mercy. Call it Not yet, not yet, as Heaven threatens to explode inwards in fire and shredded flesh, and the angels caw. 3 a.m. Wind seethes in the leaves around me the trees exude night birds night birds yell inside my ears like stabbed hearts my heart stutters in my fluttering cloth body I dangle with strength going out of the wind seethes in my body tattering the words I clench my fists hold No talisman or silver disk my lungs flail as if drowning I call on you as witness I did no crime I was born I have borne I bear I will be born this is a crime I will not acknowledge leaves and wind hold on to me I will not give in 6 a.m. Sun comes up, huge and blaring, no longer a simile for God. Wrong address. I've been out there. Time is relative, let me tell you I have lived a millennium. I would like to say my hair turned white overnight, but it didn't. Instead it was my heart; bleached out like meat in water. Also, I'm about three inches taller. This is what happens when you drift in space listening to the gospel of the red hot stars. Pinpoints of infinity riddle my brain, a revelation of deafness. At the end of my rope I testify to silence. Don't say I'm not grateful. Most will only have one death. I will have two. 8 a.m. When they come to harvest my corpse (open your mouth, close your eyes) cut my body from the rope, surprise, surprise, I was still alive. Tough luck, folks, I know the law: you can't execute me twice for the same thing. How nice. I fell to the clover, breathed it in, and bared my teeth at them in a filthy grin. You can imagine how that went over. Now I only need to look out at them through my sky-blue eyes. They see their own ill will staring them in the forehead and turn tail. Before, I was not a witch. But now I am one. Later My body of skin waxes and wanes around my true body, a tender nimbus. I skitter over the paths and fields, mumbling to myself like crazy, mouth full of juicy adjectives and purple berries. The townsfolk dive headfirst into the bushes to get out of my way. My first death orbits my head, an ambiguous nimbus, medallion of my ordeal. No one crosses that circle. Having been hanged for something I never said, I can now say anything I can say. Holiness gleams on my dirty fingers, I eat flowers and dung, two forms of the same thing, I eat mice and give thanks, blasphemies gleam and burst in my wake like lovely bubbles. I speak in tongues, my audience is owls. My audience is God, because who the hell else could understand me? The words boil out of me, coil after coil of sinuous possibility. The cosmos unravel from my mouth, all fullness, all vacancy.

                                     ��                                                                        —Margaret Atwood, “Half-Hanged Mary”

#margaret atwood #half hanged mary #morning in the burned house #poetry #(i know it's a pretty long poem but it was too good not to post the whole thing) #hanging tw #murder tw