[Here is a translation of João Cabral de Melo Neto’s Uma Faca Só Lâmina. I first started working on this 22 years ago!]
A Blade with no Handle
(The Utility of Idées Fixes)
A Poem by João Cabral de Melo Neto
Translated by Paul Webb
Recife, 1997-2019
Like a bullet lodged
in human flesh,
fattening up
one side of death;
like a bullet of the
heaviest lead lodged
in muscle, tipping
the weighing scales;
some bullet that has
a living mechanism,
one that’s possessed
of beating heart,
a clockwork heart
submerged in flesh,
like a clock alive
and insurgent,
a clock that has
the vitality of a knife
and is as pitiless as
a slate-blue blade;
like a knife without
pocket or sheath
that has grown part
of your anatomy;
an intimate kind of
knife; a knife for
internal use only, as close
to us as the skeleton
of those whose skeleton
has always ached,
of those constantly being
cut up by their own bones.
A
Be it bullet, clock or
angry blade, it is, never-
theless, an absence that
a human creature bears.
Yet, what is not
within is like a bullet:
of leaded metal,
the same compact caliber.
This thing that is not
within is like a clock’s
pulse in a cage,
untiring, restless.
This thing that is not
within is like the zealous
presence of a knife,
of any brand new blade.
This is why the best
of the symbols used
is the steely cruel blade
(best made in Sheffield):
because no symbol suggests
so well this keen absence
as this image of a knife
with no handle,
none better represents
that so impatient absence
than a knife whittled wholly
down to its bare point,
than the image of a knife
delivered up entirely
to that hunger for things
that is stoked by knives.
B
The life of such of a knife
is of the most startling kind:
the knife itself, or some
metaphor, can be cultivated.
And the way it is cultured
is more surprising still:
it thrives not on what it consumes
but on that of which it is starved.
You can abandon it,
that intestine knife:
you will never find it
empty-mouthed.
It distills acid and vinegar
from nothingness
and other stratagems
exclusive to sabers.
And, like the knife it is,
full of passion and drive,
unassisted, it sets in motion
its perverse machine:
the unclothed blade
grows as it is worn down;
the less it sleeps,
the less sleep it needs,
the more it cuts,
the more cutting it becomes;
it lives to be born in others
like a wellspring.
(And the life of this knife
is measured backwards,
be it clock or bullet
or the knife itself.)
C
Careful with the object,
with the cared for object,
even if it is a bullet
of this steel-tipped lead,
because the bullet comes
with teeth already obtuse
and, with facility, is blunted
even further in the muscle.
Be even more careful,
though, when it’s the clock,
with its spasmodic
ticking heart alight.
Care is required,
because the tick of the clock
cannot keep time
with the pulse of the blood,
and the shiny copper inside
is not put off its stride
by the beating blood, even
when it has lost its bite.
Moreover, if it is the knife,
take special extra care:
for the sheath of flesh
can absorb its steel.
Its cut also sometimes
tends to go hoarse and
there are cases where metal
is broken down to leather.
The important thing is that
the knife not lose its zeal
nor that it be corrupted
by its handle of wood.
D
For this knife sometimes
goes out of its own accord.
This is known as
the ebbing of the blade.
It may be that it is not
extinguished but dormant.
If the clock is the image,
its buzz has ceased to be.
But, whether sleeping
or extinct, when its engine
stalls, its whole soul becomes
alkaline in nature, very
similar to the neutral,
almost felt-like substance
that is the stuff of souls
unblessed with skeletons of knives.
And this sword-blade,
whose flame has guttered out,
and the jittery clock and
the indigestible projectile,
all alike follow the process
of the blunting blade,
be it knife, clockwork,
bullet of wood or cloth,
be it leather bullet, clock
of tar, knife invertebrate,
forged of honey or of clay.
(However, when we are
already least expecting it,
the tide crashes back, the
knife springs back to life
in a shower of sparkling crystal)
E
We must keep the knife
well out of the way; for,
in the damp, its lightning
flash will not last long
(in the damp spawned
of gossip and saliva:
the stickier it gets,
the more confidential).
This care is required
even if it is no knife
ablaze inside you,
but rather clock or bullet.
They do not flourish either
in all types of weather;
their savage flesh thrives
only in torrid chambers.
If you will suffer them,
you must take them out
into the open air of some
wilderness or moorland.
But it can´t be the kind
of air birds inhabit.
It must be dry and harsh,
unshaded with no commotion.
Never at night. For night
puts out fertile feelers. Let
it be in the acid sunshine
of the Northeastern states.
Let it be in the heatstroke
that turns air into sponge
that makes the earth thirst
and turns grass into wire.
F
Whether it be that bullet
or whatever other image,
be it even a clock
that awaits the wound,
or still just the knife
that has only a blade,
of all the images the
keenest, the most vivid,
no-one of the body
can remove it, no matter
whether it’s a bullet,
clock or knife alike,
no matter what
the race of this blade,
be it tame table-knife
or savage Pernambucana.
And, if irretrievable
for the one who has suffered
its assault, still less can it be yanked
out by any neighboring hand.
Ineffective against it
are all the medical arts
of numeral knives and
arithmetical pincers.
Not even the police,
with their surgeons,
nor time itself with its
balls of cotton wool.
Nor even the hand of one
who planted, unbeknownst,
this bullet, clock or blade,
these images of outright fury.
G
This bullet that a man
sometimes takes in his flesh
renders less rarefied
all that awaits.
And what a clock involves,
unbiddable, insectine,
enfolded in the flesh,
alerts that flesh yet more.
And if knife is a metaphor
for something stuck in muscle,
the knives inside only
drive a person further.
The sharpened edge of a knife
biting into human flesh
goes armed with another
body or dagger.
For, quickening the soul-
springs, it gives them the impetus
of a blade, the passion
of a close-combat weapon,
as well as having the body,
which bristlingly keeps it,
dissolves not in sleep
nor in all things so vague,
like that story
somebody tells
of a man with so sharp
a power of recollection
he can retain thirty years
later in his palm, the weight
of a woman’s hand
once so tightly held in his.
H
When one who suffers them works
with words, they are useful,
the clock, the bullet, and,
above all, the knife.
The men in general
who work this shop
have a stock only
of extinct words:
some smothered under
the dust, others disappeared
in the midst of great knots;
words that through use
have lost all the mettle
and the grit that grips
the attention of those
who can barely read.
For this knife alone
will furnish such a workman
with eyes the sharper to see
his own vocabulary.
Only this knife and
the example of its edge
will teach him to obtain
from his malignant matter
the qualities that all
best knives possess:
ferocious sharpness,
a certain electric charge,
plus their clean violence and
exactness, that predilection
for desert wildernesses
that is the style of knives.
I
Like bullet and clock,
this adverse blade
quickens the senses
of all that hold it,
is capable of waking alike
all objects that lie around,
in such a way that even liquids
are graced with bone.
All that was vague, all flimsy
matter and materials, for one
who’s gone under the knife
is endowed with nerves and edges.
Every thing around
is more full of life, imbued
with the clarity of a needle,
the presence of a wasp.
The cutting edge of all things
that are is now laid bare
and those, like wax,
that appear obtuse
are stripped now
of the callouses of routine
and set about their work,
all their jutting vertices alive.
And, amongst so many other
already sleepless things,
someone cut by a knife
and borrowing its cut,
victim of the blade and
its so frigid jet, roams,
lucid and awake, pitting
edge against edge.
*
Back from that knife,
friendly or enemy,
that best condenses a man
the more it chews him up;
back from that knife
so clandestine in bearing
it should be carried in
concealment like a skeleton;
back from the image lingered
longest over, of the blade,
which is, most certainly,
sharpest of all.
So now, back from the knife,
another image looms,
that of a clock pricking
away beneath the flesh;
and thereupon another,
the first, of a bullet,
that is so coarse-toothed
yet bites so hard;
and thence to the recollection
such images bedeck,
so much more powerful
than the power of language itself;
and, eventually, to the
presence of raw reality
that engendered the memory
and engenders it still;
and, last of all, reality itself,
raw and so violent that
in struggling to grasp it,
every image comes to grief.
Poetry, Politics & Language 