On forging a sword

 

Wayland the Wanderer taught us how to find

the tough, bright iron, never prey to rust,

that not from earth but from the sky is mined

but for myself I’d sooner put my trust

in crucibles and bright electric arcs

with iron, carbon, tungsten, manganese,

vanadium…  assayed by fiery sparks

and spectrographs. We mix them as we please,

surpassing any ancient recipe,

katana of Japan, Toledo steel,

in fiery melts, controlled to fine degree.

We get our billet, stamped with maker’s seal

and those proportions that the chemist found,

in heavy bars of alloy, shiny, round.

 

 

It is the time for glowing steel and prayers.

A dragon’s breath comes flaming from the hearth,

exhaling poisons in sulphurous flares.

We lay the billet in its burning bath

until with cheerful red it glows but not

that brilliant lustre with which iron burns,

consuming it to dust in fire too hot.

The bellows moderates, the colour turns.

Red-hot from hearth it crinkles empty air.

It eats all flesh and so we dread its touch,

however leather-skinned, and yet we dare

to hold and carry it with iron clutch.

Unto its sister where the hammer swings,

the billet flattens and the anvil sings.

Unyielding mother of the shining sword,

the anvil has a merry tone and clear.

Her warlike rhythms ring out chord by chord

to shape the weapons of the chevalier.

She turns to a harmonious refrain

that pierces to the heights of heaven’s clouds.

Musicians listen, play the theme again,

in far-off cities to delighted crowds.

The billet bends beneath the hammer blows

to sickle shape, a section of a wedge,

the nascent figure that the craftsman knows

will straighten out to form a cutting edge.

We hear the swish of tyres in the rain,

the sough of pebbles on the stormy beach.

The best of steel is quenched in warm champagne

to dull its colour from the cherry-peach.

Unwillingly it takes the curse of Cain

in busy bubbles, clouds of scolding steam,

and hisses sibilant, a viper’s scream

and then it’s sullen, cold and rough of coat,

embrittled as the thinnest champagne glass

but innocent of threat to any throat

and fit for cutting neither flesh nor grass.

 

It’s now reheated, scratched with brick to show

the oxide colours: Oxford blue for blades

that do not break but bend beneath a blow.

Light blue to give the edge that never fades

but there are secrets that cannot be told

of different tempers, using clay and oil,

of shattering to shards, of fold on fold

to forge anew with added sweat and toil. 

Some things are governed by a rule of three:

blade, edge and tang make up the trinity.

 

 

A chisel cuts the red-hot steel like cheese,

with deadly cuttings smoking on the floor.

When cold it has no eagerness to please:

the hardest chisel barely leaves a score.

A grainy whetstone at the waterspout

unpeels the chrysalis. The dragonfly’s

pearlescent wings are eager to be out.

The blade is fixed and polished as it lies

unmoving, inch by inch, in slaveries

of toilsome work with fine and finer stone

till rich striations curl in traceries

to show the sword has patterns of its own.

This is the ending of the swordsmith’s skill:

the naked blade is polished, straight and true.

It is an ornament; not meant to kill,

to whistle in the wind, to stab and hew.

It can escape the gripping hands of guilt,

remain unfitted for the ranks of war,

until it has been furnished with a hilt

and then it’s in state of grace no more.

A sword can never sleep when in the hand;

its cuts run deep; our blood soaks into sand.