Helle Busacca (1915-1996) was born in Messina and moved with her family to Bergamo as a young child. She spent her working life as a high school teacher in various cities in Italy and ultimately settled in Florence in 1971. Eugenio Montale and Corrado Pavolini, among others, took note of her writing, and Pavolini enabled the publication of her first volume of poetry, Giuoco nella memoria, in 1947. She went on to write eight other volumes of “>poetry, a novel, and a collection of short stories. Family tragedy, especially the suicide of her brother Aldo in 1965, marks much of her work.
On her C.V. in 1988, Helle Busacca wrote, “I’ve come to see that almost all of my writing, poetry or prose, is war writing, and anyone looking for pure lyric will waste their time.”
Helle Busacca’s papers, including the poems translated here, are preserved in the Archivio Stato di Firenze.
When it’s dark
We went out around midnight into the deserted Milan
streets, corso Italia, with Anna Maria Ortese
and Massimo Leli
and Guido Ballo and I don’t know who else,
and I held the tender hand
of a little girl whose black curls
and big eyes I remember but not her name,
and all of a sudden she said in a loud voice:
“It’s dark. When it’s dark, we must be quiet.”
Well then, I thought, we must be quiet all the time.
Quando è buio
Andavamo verso mezzanotte per le vie di Milano
deserte, corso Italia, con Anna Maria Ortese
e Massimo Leli
e Guido Ballo e non so chi altri,
e io tenevo nella mia la manina tenera
di una bimba di cui rammento i riccioli neri
e i grandi occhi ma non il nome,
e a un tratto lei disse a voce alta:
“È buio. Quando è buio, bisogna tacere”.
Allora, pensai io, bisognerebbe tacere sempre.
and, see, I can’t die
I can’t leave everything behind
as you chose to do, these imbeciles
always said: time heals
but I don’t want to heal
you’d want to heal from love
who’d ever want that, you’d want
had this been what ailed you, to heal from God
e, vedi, io non posso morire
non posso lasciarmi tutto alle spalle
come tu hai deciso, questi imbecilli
hanno sempre detto: il tempo guarisce
ma io non voglio guarire
vorresti guarire di chi ti ha amato
chi mai lo vorrebbe, vorresti
se lo avessi, guarire di Dio
You say: “a man is made
of his past.”
But there’s no such thing as
the past, not anywhere: you can’t touch it
and you can’t see it
Tu dici: “e pur fatto, un uomo
del suo passato”.
Ma non c’è, non esiste
il passato, in nessun luogo: non lo tocchi
e non lo vedi
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