Jefferson David Chalfant, The Blacksmith
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Labor Day
Here’s a good worker poem for Labor Day. Seamus Heaney’s “The Forge” is a nostalgic look at an ancient profession. Passing by “old axles and iron hoops rusting,” the poet enters a dark room where the blacksmith, somewhat mythically, hammers upon an anvil that is “horned as a unicorn.” This is sacred space as the smith hammers upon an “altar,” “expend[ing] himself in shape and music.
And if perchance he ventures outside to view the modern world, he sees nothing worth noting: monotonous traffic flashes by where once there was a “clatter of hoofs.” Unimpressed, he returns to “beat real iron out, to work the bellows.” “Leathered aproned” with “hairs in his nose,” he stands in contrast to the anonymous, mechanized work force of our own time. He brings to mind Longfellow’s smith:
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
I suspect Heaney was well acquainted with this figure from pre-industrial times.
The Forge
By Seamus Heaney
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 center,
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.