The Forge

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, "Forging the Anchor"

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,

Set there immoveable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter

Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick

To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Seamus Heaney

One of the most arresting first lines. It has dug its way into my head. This is another poem that is a kind of self-portrait - this time of a poet and his work. That "All I know is a door into the dark." so perfectly describes the step of faith a writer takes when he picks up a pen. The tools of the blacksmith's trade, the hammer and anvil "an altar/Where he expends himself in shape and music", is so much what he does, hammering out the thoughts on the page till they have a form and a rhythm. I love how Heaney sees writing as physical, gritty hard labour. His poem about digging is similar. For him, poetry is not a higher plane, it's a getting down to earth, an elemental, age-old craft that is useful and necessary to everyday life. Writing is "To beat real iron out, to work the bellows." I love this poem, both sides of it - the description of the blacksmith at work in his forge, a dying art, and the inner poem that shows the drive and commitment to creation that a poet must sweat and hammer out in words.

 

The Sycamore

Andrew Wyeth

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry

Self-portrait by means of a tree. How many times this has been done, and yet it never tires. I love this poem. All of Berry's love for the land comes out in it. And there are so many layers. "Whose earth I am shaped in" - like Adam, made of the earth and responsible for it.  "There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it." What a line that is! And these too, "It bears the gnarls of its history healed over." "It has gathered all accidents into its purpose." Now that is hope. That is sheer wonder. That is how God works. I would be ruled by that principle too.