The Cutler and his Craft

This work was inspired by a local craftsman in the town of Pienza, Italy. He had rigged a bicycle and used it to power his sandstone to sharpen his customer's cutlery. It was quite clever, and I wrote this for him;

The Honer

With the bare tools of his trade;
a converted bike as his motor; a sandstone; some water;
old, skilled hand with a keen sense for acuteness;
he set about his local trade of sharpening his patrons’ wares.
His was a particular passion for knives.
He enjoyed most about his craft
the humble pleasure of taking a dull knife,
one that had lost its sheer edge,
its purpose to cut
through and make the ignorant bleed,
and honing it for days...
During that period of time,
Like Lowell in the act of revising,
as the night-light burned,
he honed the instrument for a finer, yet finer
even finer edge,
Each stroke on sandstone
he would pass the knife’s edge over his often-used hand,
no longer able to bleed,
to gauge how much farther he could go.
Tonight though seemed different.
He had always felt he delivered fair product for his price.
True, his patrons did bring back the same knives
he had sharpened before– but this was common in his trade.
He wanted to be remembered for more.
He knew the Old Masters never got back their poems.
In his way, he too wanted to whet a knife
that would never dull, lose its cut
and ability to make bleed.
Pedaling with unknown power, he worked the steel over sandstone
and with hardened hands he wrought his metal music.
He seemed to grow delirious as he felt himself nearing
the precipice of all his years as a cutler.
Then he heard a sound he had never before
plucked from the steel-stone instrument;
the knife has reached it point,
it had severed him.
He bled for the first time in his life.
He died, with quiet, almost anonymous.