Mark Wilson
THE SMITH
The smith slaps the flat of his anvil
and knows well the work of its years.
At his torso above the vast grass
is aimed the tool's fat black horn.
He works on gates for a grand home
and sparks are shed like rain in the meadow.
He stands strong in the meadow
as his hammer delivers shrieks from the anvil.
He sees his gates open on a home
fit for a pageantry of years
as he forms a great latch around the horn.
He knows how work led him to the grass
and how he wants to die on the grass,
his thick limbs crushing the blades of its meadow
like a magnificent slain beast of lore, horn
dug deep in the green, heavy as an anvil.
Until his end comes he will work for years
On these commissioned gates for a home
whose inhabitants he cannot know. A home
of bovine solitude where chewed grass
is the most notable violence; where years
sigh and the brow's last sweat is slung to the meadow;
to the home of the granite anvil
beseeching gentlest toil on its timid horn.
The smith forms spirals on his horn
and envisions his entrance to the home
until between his hands and his anvil
come his gates like wings above the grass.
They stretch in terrible iron over the meadow,
their black ore clutched by earth for years
now forged to a servitude of years.
Open, their split harmony of arc and horn
steers a design and divides the meadow.
Closed, the symmetry shapes the home
and defines a Paradise of sacred grass
where grows a green irreducible anvil.
All years end inside the gates of the home.
The smith lies deep in the meadow grass
and the meadow hides the horn of his anvil.
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