Penitence

In the poem “Penitence” by John Burnside, the narrator has done something that he greatly regrets and seems to feel ashamed and remorseful. As the title demonstrates this works is about penitence and sorrow. Dread is a feeling that runs throughout the poem yet hope appears towards the end of the poem. The main themes of the poem are grief and guilt. The poem also expresses how the human world affects the natural world and what happens when the two collide.

At the beginning of the poem, the narrator describes to us how he hits a deer with his car when he doses off. He tries to defend himself by saying that he was driving in a storm that he would not have been able to see the deer in. There is definitely a feeling of guilt in this part of the poem as he is telling himself that he did not see the deer. When he says that he was “driving into the wind” it suggests that he was driving in poor conditions. “On a northern road” also suggests this because weather is typ...