In his poem, "The Tollund Man" and in the poem "Punishment," the contemporary Irish poet Seamus Heaney creates a fusion of Irish past and Irish present, as well as creates for himself an Irish poetic persona that exists across time, and can dwell simultaneously in the Irish past and the present. Present Ireland in "The Tollund Man" becomes fused with an ancient Irish persona, as the poet sees himself as one with the remains of an ancient Celtic man. Present and past Irish history become one as the poet envisions himself watching different generations of Irish adulteresses condemned to death in bogs in "Punishment.".

             One of the ways Heaney accomplishes his poetic meshing together of the past and present events is that he often speaks in the present tense. "The Tollund Man" begins with the words, "Some day I will go to Aarhus/ To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap." Although the name of the location and the skin cap of the dead man are archaic, the speaker relates this journey to the reader as if it were a casual decision to visit the man in the "the flat country near by." .

             Only when the burial and disinterment of the man is spoken of does the reader realize how old the relic of the man is, "his last gruel of winter seeds,Caked in his stomach." The man is naked, except for his old-style cap, and except for the covering of the earth. Heaney calls the Tollund Man the "bridegroom to the goddess," earth as if the man were wedded to the goddess of the land Ireland. Ireland"s earthy bosom, "opened her fen,those dark juices workingHim to a saint's kept body." The Irish earth preserved the Tollund man, and also consecrated him with the "dark juice of rotting." Even insects are called "turf cutters" of "honeycombed workings," in the sweet way they have become one with the man"s flesh-the man is still part of the present-day Irish earth through the process of decomposing and becoming one with Irish earth.