Vocation

In his poem "Blacksmith Shop," Nobel Prize Winner Czeslaw Milosz associates his joy in witnessing the shop in action with his calling to be a poet.  He concludes his celebration of "a piece of iron in the fire, held there by tongs/ Red, softened for the anvil,/ Beaten with a hammer, bent into a horseshoe...
                                 
                                             At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor,
                                             Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds.
                                              I  stare and stare.   It seems I was called for this: 
                                             To glorify things just because they are.

                                               Provinces
                                               Translated from the Polish                   
                                                by Czeslaw Milosz  
                                                and Robert Hass
                                                The Ecco Press