English Original
knife cold swimming into blue bones
Modern Haiku, 44:1, 2013
Susan Constable
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
刀刃冰冷般地游入藍骨
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
刀刃冰冷般地游入蓝骨
Bio Sketch
Susan Constable (1943–2026) was an award-winning Canadian poet whose haiku and tanka appeared widely in global journals. She authored the acclaimed collection The Eternity of Waves and served as tanka editor for A Hundred Gourds (2012–2016). Constable also co-edited multiple anthologies and judged numerous international short-form poetry contests.
The opening phrase, “knife cold,” establishes an immediate atmosphere of sharpness, chill, and physical sensation. The unexpected shift into “swimming into blue bones” transforms the knife from a static object into an active, almost fluid presence. Most striking is the phrase “blue bones,” which evokes coldness, bruising, submerged depth, and exposed anatomy, creating an eerie, dreamlike image that resists a single fixed interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThe poem’s psychological force emerges from the tension between cutting and swimming. A knife suggests violence, precision, penetration, and resistance, while “swimming” suggests fluidity, weightlessness, and graceful movement. These seemingly incompatible actions collide within the same image, producing a disturbing sense of violence rendered almost beautifully. The poem’s power lies precisely in this friction between brutality and grace.
The single, unbroken line intensifies that effect. Rather than dividing the image into discrete moments, the line allows the words to flow continuously into one another, so that “knife,” “cold,” “swimming,” “blue,” and “bones” are experienced almost simultaneously. The syntax itself seems to enact the poem’s movement: the knife does not simply enter the bones; it swims into them. In this way, the poem’s form and imagery become inseparable, creating a compressed, visceral experience characteristic of gendai haiku.