Minotaur (2008)

Minotaur (2008)

(November 6, 2008) Minotaur: A Translation of "Laberinto," by Jorge Luis Borges (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008)

Minotaur

There’ll never be a door. You’re stuck inside.
These sunken casemates are the universe,
all the universe of signs: forward, reverse,
no centre to the web, no world outside.

Don’t think the insane precision of your game,
monotonously counting every turn,
monotonously counting every turn,
will save you. The result will be the same.

Stop looking forward to the bloody charge
of the beast who is a man – who is your double –
whose shadow punctuates this seamless puzzle
of rubber walls contracted to a cage.

He isn’t there. You’re fucked. You’d better learn
not to expect the dark thrust of his horn.

(12-18/12/97)

Bronwyn Lloyd: Minotaur. Pania Press (23/10/08)

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31 Days (3)

Jorge Luis Borges
(1899-1986)

El puñal

En un cajón hay un puñal.

Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo dio a mi padre, que lo trajo del Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego lo tuvo alguna vez en la mano.
Quienes lo ven tienen que jugar un rato con él; se advierte que hace mucho que lo buscaban; la mano se apresura a apretar la empuñadura que la espera; la hoja obediente y poderosa juega con precisión en la vaina.

Otra cosa quiere el puñal.

Es más que una estructura hecha de metales; los hombres lo pensaron y lo formaron para un fin muy preciso; es, de algún modo eterno, el puñal que anoche mató un hombre en Tacuarembó y los puñales que mataron a César. Quiere matar, quiere derramar brusca sangre.

En un cajón del escritorio, entre borradores y cartas, interminablemente sueña el puñal con su sencillo sueño de tigre, y la mano se anima cuando lo rige porque el metal se anima, el metal que presiente en cada contacto al homicida para quien lo crearon los hombres.

A veces me da lástima. Tanta dureza, tanta fe, tan apacible o inocente soberbia, y los años pasan, inútiles.

The Dagger

In a drawer there is a dagger.

It was forged in Toledo, at the end of last century; Luis Melián Lafinur gave it to my father, who brought it from Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego once held it in his hand.
Those who see it have to play with it a little bit; it warns them that for a long time they have been looking for it; the hand hurries to press the handle that awaits it; the obedient and powerful blade moves precisely in the sheath.

The dagger wants something else.

It is more than a structure made out of metal; people thought it up and formed it for a very precise end; it is, somehow eternally, the dirk that yesterday evening killed a man in Tacuarembó and the daggers that killed Caesar. It wants to kill, wants to spill sudden blood.

In a drawer of the desk, between drafts and letters, endlessly the dagger dreams with of his simple tiger-sleep, and the hand cheers up when it governs it because the metal cheers up, the metal that anticipates in every contact the killer for whom the men created it.

Sometimes I feel sorry for it. So many hardness, so much faith, so much pleasant or innocent pride, and the years pass, useless.