The Forge
Sacrifice to rebirth to sacrifice
Raked ugly, spitting
In the great furnaces
In bellow deep breaths
Human bone-coal
Shoveled in
Fed to the forge
A whispering cosmology of the divine
A galaxy of embers
Smelted, rendered, reduced
A dance of spheres
Behind the thick heavy summer moon
Burning out the ghosts
From the swept hearth
Burning out the souls
As darkness falls
On the pyres
And the solitude of ash
Mud
The moon is hiding under the wind
Watching as the funeral pyres of latter day saints
Spit in the grounds of schools,
The greasy smoke makes it eerie.
Religion is lost
But the body is swift.
Above
The stars part only for aeroplanes
As they drop from the firmament to live amongst the mud.
And the world does not notice
This earth world is a bone-vault
And does not notice,
It has shrunk,
Embalmed in a likeness of itself
A grinning richter.
The beehives have been emptied
Their tiny husks scattered to the wind
Funeral confetti
For this night of wands
And dark ritual.
Tim Downie describes himself as an actor, poet, and social activist. Although he has always written poetry, his main work has been writing for the theatre. His first play, The Dead Moon was commissioned and staged at the Aldeburgh Festival in the summer of 2008 (the first non-operatic play ever to be performed there.) As a playwright, his work has been performed at the Soho Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, The Kings Head and as part of the Offcut and London Bridge Festivals. In 2013 The Curse of Elizabeth Faulkner debuted at the Edinburgh fringe, which later transferred to London’s West End.