LAMPEDUSA (AGRIGENTO), 24 NOVEMBER 2019 – Seven bodies, of the twenty gone missing, have been retrieved after the shipwreck yesterday at a mile from the coast of Lampedusa…
| Naufragi
Erri De Luca
Nei canali di Otranto e Sicilia migratori senz’ali, contadini di Africa e di oriente affogano nel cavo delle onde. Un viaggio su dieci s’impiglia sul fondo, il pacco dei semi si sparge nel solco scavato dall’ancora e non dall’aratro. La terraferma Italia è terrachiusa. Li lasciamo annegare per negare. |
Stranded
Erri De Luca
In the straits of Otranto and Sicily migrants with no wings, farmers from Africa and the east drown in the hollow of the waves. One sail out of ten gets tangled in the seafloor, the bag of seeds is strewn in the groove raked by the anchor and not the plough. The Italian mainland is sealed land. We leave them to drown to disown them.
Translation ©Matilda Colarossi 2019 |
The migration crisis that often ends in tragic death is the theme of this brief poem from Opera sull’acqua e altre poesie (2002), the author’s first collection of poems. In the poem, De Luca denounces the indifference that surrounds the phenomenon.
Unfortunately today, November 24, 2019 is no different from then. Seventeen years have passed and nothing has changed, in the indifference of us all: http://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/topnews/2019/11/24/migrantinaufragio7-cadaveri-recuperati_0596e24b-06b4-4192-be7a-35c25119df7b.html
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parallel texts: words reflected 
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