卡塔尼亚

我们住在小镇边缘的一座石头农舍里。
我被分配处理庇护申请，
而你则来清点关于岛屿内陆
政府可以廉价出售的废弃房屋。
一对燕子住在我们的烟囱里。
清晨，我开车穿过干草和苜蓿田，前往收容中心。
沿着小溪，一片向日葵田横跨土地。
我采访的大多数男人原本是农民，
他们因为干旱，有时是洪水或虫害离开家乡。
下午，向日葵在田野里弯腰，云朵像雪花石膏一样白。
回到家，我会发现你躺在壁炉旁，
听着燕子的叫声。我们是彼此的祝福，
爱情如此新鲜，日子充满着希望。
战火蔓延，越来越多的船只靠岸。
妇女和儿童被安置在一个新的地方。
我不切实际地学习西西里语，并非因为我的祖父会说这种语言，
而是因为我想忘却时间。
我可以查阅向日葵的名字。
我可以向别人请教。但我享受的正是这种不知其名的滋味，
一个可以救赎我们的词语的可能性，
当我缓慢地开车经过田野，
看着野鸡消失在路边的浓密灌木丛中。
我躺在你身边，在烟囱旁的冰冷石头上。
燕子出去觅食，或去寻找毛发和稻草。
大多数购买空房子的富人
都无法修复它们，你告诉我，物资短缺，
劳动力难以找到。夜风带着田野的气息
穿过没有纱窗的窗户。一群白鹭
跟随收割机，贪婪地吞食着
被刀片夺去庇护所，
暴露在外的昆虫和青蛙。

作者 / 本杰明·古奇亚迪
翻译 / 光诸

Catania 

We lived in a stone farmhouse at the edge of town.
I’d been assigned to process asylum claims
and you’d come to write about the abandoned homes
in the island’s interior the government was selling cheap.
A family of barn swallows lived inside our chimney.
In the mornings, I drove to the intake centre through fields
of hay, alfalfa. A crop of sunflowers spanned the tract
along the creek. Most of the men I interviewed were farmers
back home. They’d left because of drought, sometimes flood or blight.
Afternoons, the sunflowers bowed in their furrows and the clouds
turned alabaster. At home, I’d find you lying on the hearth
listening to the swallows. We were good to each other,
so new in our love, with shape to our days.
The fighting spread and more ships came ashore.
Women and children were held in a new location.
Impractically, I studied Sicilian, not because my grandfather
spoke it, because I wanted to unlearn time.
I could have looked up the word for sunflower.
I could’ve asked. But it was the not knowing I savored
on the slow drives through the fields, the pheasants
disappearing into the thick brush along the road.
The possibility of a word that could redeem us.
I lay beside you on the cool stone beside the chimney.
The swallows were out hunting, or looking for hair, grass.
Most of the rich who’d bought the empty houses
couldn’t fix them up, you told me, supplies were scarce,
labor hard to find. Night wind carried the smell of the fields
through the screenless windows. A flock of egrets
followed the baler, gorging on the insects and frogs
the blades exposed and left without shelter.

BY BENJAMIN GUCCIARDI