The Blacksmith

Our village blacksmith's wife and my mother were best friends, they had been each the other's bridesmaid. He had spent years as a prisoner of the Japanese during the War. His wife confided in my mother.He had nightmares. He could never face a Japanese person again. He wouldn't trust himself not to become violent. The rest of this poem is a fiction.

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The five-ten Sunday smoked to the halt
With a mighty squeal of steam
And the blacksmith stepped with army boots
To the light of their toe-cap gleam,
On the earth of his native village
That, seven years unseen
Sung a welcome in the birdsong
From the oak on the echoing green.

In the empty lane with his cardboard case
And the the sound of crunching boots.
Stepping steel-hobbed; for his mates he sobbed;
Not for them any pin-striped suits.
By death they had all been demobbed;
By death in sweat and soot.
By another line, another train,
By a yellow bastard's boot.

For him six months in an Aussie bed
But time's not a caring nurse.
No Nightingale could enter his head
Stop the nightmares getting worse;
Of twenty thousand starved and dead
Of dysentery and pain.
Of belly-pinching parasites;
Of their graves on a purple plain.

The oak of a man with an iron will
Before a gap in the churchyard wall
Stood measuring the dead and the drum in his head
Beat the march of humanity's fall.
To a stinking Burmese jungle camp;
To the drip of monsoon leaves.
To a dying mate on a makeshift bed;
To the red blood that he heaves

No hope in a nod of an enemy's head.
No hope in a helpless eye.
No hope of a man in fear for his soul
Causing others to suffer and die
Enslaved in chains in a labour camp
To humiliate and scorn.
The living dead who lived in dread
Of the next day's orange dawn.

And the blacksmith turned and he set his jaw
And the steel flashed in his eye
And out he strode on the cart-rutted road
To the smithy yard hard by.
And the smell of hate and coal and ire
And a suit in a corner flung
And the rush of a pail of anthracite
And a hammer as grey as a gun.

In the forge remembered campfires rose
When the bellows roared thundering dawn
On the rust and dust of seven years,
And a naked man reborn
In the sure swing swung of a four pound peen
And the anvils's pealing ring.
And the jungle sweat on a squaddie's brow
Made the blue steel billets sing.

And the red hot iron was wrought and bent
And the sparks flew in the grate
And each twist and bend the imagined end
Of each man who had taught him to hate.
On a railway track in the Burmese bush
With each rail and sleeper laid,
He had felt the mounting murderous flush
Of the pink flesh that they flayed.

And each filthy bowl of their putrid rice
He had thrown in every scroll
Of the gate he wrought for the men that fought
To survive in that Jap hell hole.
And the rivets were ten thousand men
Who fell on that Devil's track
And the joins and welds were the bonds that held
White hands behind a back.

At the smithy's door the wakened crowd
Of the huddled hamlet stood.
And metal quenched and muscle clenched
Lifting iron on a back of wood.
And the congregation followed him
As he staggered with his iron bosse
To the house of the good great kindly God
And the stations of the cross.

And each insult saw him stop and pause
And mouth a silent prayer
For each man of twenty thousand men
Whose faith turned to despair.
Who stumbled and fell on that Calvary track
And bled from their stigmata
And thirsted in the Burmese sun
But were given vinegar.

The Smith heaved his cross up the stone cold-steps.
Weeping priest and village all
Saw him make for the end of the nuptial path
And the gap of his faith in the wall.
And the gate was hung and the day was done
And the colours of one man's hate
Were quenched in the twisted bars and scrolls
Of his own memorial gate.

In the public bar they raised a jar
To the man from Gallilee.
He brought their blacksmith safely home
To their green and its old oak tree.
Here's a health to faith in Redeemer Christ
And to Resurrection Day!
And, a drunken priest whispered to his ale,
Here's a health to Enola Gay

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