Bologna in Lettere 10th
International Multidisciplinary Festival
International Poetry Review
(a cura di Enzo Campi)
Jade Lascelles
The inevitable
Traduzione Maria Luisa Vezzali
Jade Lascelles is a writer, editor, musician, and letterpress printer based in Boulder, Colorado, USA. She is the author of the full-length collection The Invevitable (Gesture Press, 2021). Selections of her work have also appeared in numerous journals and the anthologies Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism and Precipice: Writing at the Edge, as well as being featured in the Ed Bowes film Gold Hill and the visual art exhibit and accompanying book Shame Radiant. Several of her poems have been translated into Italian for the journal Le Voci della Luna. Beyond her writing endeavors, she is a longtime steward of the Harry Smith Print Shop at Naropa University, a core member of the art group The Wilds, and plays drums in a few different musical projects.
It was the year she turned twenty-seven that the moths arrived. It was innocuous in the beginning.
Fu l’anno in cui compì ventisette anni che arrivarono le falene. All’inizio una cosa da nulla.
They would be there waiting in the living room for her to come round turning lights off in the evening.
Se ne stavano lì ad aspettare in soggiorno che lei venisse a spegnere le luci la sera.
They would sneak through the back door when she hurried the dogs inside. One might even fly out of the sink faucet while she brushed her teeth.
Si intrufolavano per la porta sul retro quando faceva rientrare i cani. Magari una poteva volare fuori dal rubinetto mentre lei si lavava i denti.
Soon, though, they became a more major pest. And then: a dominance. They rained down onto her carpets in large flakes. (Just like the undulant billows of ash—some as big as her face—that floated down around her the summer the wildfire came terribly close to town.)
Ben presto, però, divennero un problema maggiore. Poi: un’invasione. Piovevano sui tappeti in grossi fiocchi. (Proprio come le folate di cenere, alcune grandi quanto il suo viso, che le fluttuavano intorno l’estate in cui l’incendio si avvicinò terribilmente alla città.)
They fill her bathtub, the moths. When she opens the curtain each morning, dozens of them fly at her face, circle around her head. Even more scatter when she turns on the water. But there are always those that stay, that let the stream pummel their dusty wings until they cannot lift them to escape. She feels their dissolving lives flutter across her feet as they are carried toward the drain. Sometimes she thinks about trying to save them. But it feels like an impossible task, to scoop one out of a precariousness they seem determined to stay with, even as it kills them. So she lets the warm water pattern across her palms and watches for the final movements of their wings, just before they are washed away. They are so small, those last moments. They are so small, the moths.
Riempiono la vasca da bagno, le falene. Quando ogni mattina lei tira la tenda, le volano in faccia a decine, le girano intorno alla testa. Svolazzano qua e là ancora di più quando lei apre l’acqua. Ma ci sono sempre quelle che restano, che lasciano che il getto scrosci sulle loro ali polverose finché non riescono più ad aprirle per fuggire. Lei sente quelle vite dissolversi in un fremito intorno ai piedi mentre vengono trascinate verso lo scarico. A volte pensa di provare a salvarle. Ma pare un compito impossibile, prelevarne una dalla precarietà in cui sembrano determinate a rimanere anche se le uccide. Così lascia che l’acqua calda le disegni i palmi osservando i moti estremi delle loro ali, subito prima di venir trascinate via. Sono così piccole, in quegli ultimi istanti. Sono così piccole, le falene.
There was often too many of them to count. Each day there would be more—their bodies overtaking the morning newspaper, the dusty television screen, her grandfather’s antique speakers—the heft of them taking up all the space in her world. She was being invaded by them, the moths, overcome by the span of their short lives and sooty wings. So much so that she could not think of a number large enough to account for the vastness of their capabilities. How something seemingly small and delicate, harmless really, can turn noxious with enough accumulation.
Spesso ce n’erano troppe per poterle contare. Ogni giorno ce n’erano di più – ricoprivano il giornale del mattino, lo schermo polveroso della televisione, gli antichi altoparlanti di suo nonno – una massa che occupava tutto lo spazio del suo mondo. Era stata invasa da loro, le falene, sopraffatta dalla durata di quelle brevi vite, da quelle ali fuligginose. Tanto che non riusciva a pensare a un numero abbastanza grande che rendesse conto dell’estensione delle loro possibilità. Il modo in cui qualcosa di apparentemente così piccolo e fragile, davvero innocuo, può diventare nocivo dato un accumulo sufficiente