Metal though hard,

Breaks brittle with a strong blow.

 

Steel though fine,

Snaps clean if left unfinished.

 

As but a rough chunk of iron,

Cracked from a rough wall,

In a rough cave that had long known darkness.

I glinted with a light that,

When turned just so,

Lit the faces of those two who had broken me away.

 

They cleaned me up,

And chipped gently away,

At the dull rock that would hide away my inner light.

But that gentle chipping,

Never could and never would,

Prepare me for the hammer blows that were to come.

 

A blank though well shaped,

Is dull at its edges.

 

A tang though clean,

May be ill shaped for its handle.

 

As all kind souls must,

My caretakers took me,

And put me to a fire that would make a billet of me.

They had their doubts,

As all kind souls must,

But I melted so well and shaped so clean, my light shone brighter still.

 

And so I was then taken,

From the forge to the anvil,

And hopes were high that I would spread cleanly and do my caretakers proud.

But the hammering,

Is never easy to withstand,

And I with my inner light, thought that I needed none of it to hone myself.

 

A fuller well rounded,

May cut too deep.

 

A blade though fine,

May shatter in a swing.

 

I turned away from them,

Those hard hammer blows,

And with that turn took my light away from everything that knew it.

My caretakers fretted,

And my smiths fretted,

And for a long while, all thought that my inner light had finally been snuffed.

 

But one fateful night,

Warm hands took me,

They lifted me up and made me look at myself and my shape.

I was a blade rough,

A blade with fine shape,

Yet I was unfinished, marked with misplaced hammer blows.

 

The warm voice of those warm hands looked at me and told me:

'Do not shrink away. Do not hide. I too was once like you,'

And from beneath her robes she showed, well shaped steel.

'I wanted to turn from the hammer blows, but knew it was them that would make me whole'

She placed me down again to rest, and in the night I found my light anew.

 

I am but a single edge

I am but one curved flat

I am but one blade

But I shine with a light bone of fierceness and fire

I shine with a light fueled by hardship and failure

I shine in the darkness within me and without

 

I may do this not because my metal is harder, but because I have solved the riddle of steel.

I have learned that the blows come not to break me, but to forge me stronger still.