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.