Half-Hanged Mary by Margaret Atwood

"Half-hanged Mary" was Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft in the 1680s 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. 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 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. 


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 am

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 am

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 am

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 am

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.