Eva Colombo, Come la luce ovunque tocca l’ombra, capitolo quarto: L’angelo della bufera
 
Eva Colombo, As light wherever touches shadow, fourth chapter: Angel in the storm ( from Eugenio Montale )
The woman who in flight has crossed nebulosity and faced cyclones now lies exhausted on the ground with lacerated feathers, angelic - human creature troubled by a tormented sleep while the poet takes care of her freeing her forehead from ice. It is noon, the moment of light’s acme: but a black shadow, a medlar – tree’s shadow that creeps through the window, proclaims that darkness is always in ambush. Other shadows creep beside the medlar – tree’s one, they are shadows of men that mechanically turn the corner ignoring the salvific presence of angel -woman and her heroic sacrifice: being made of shadow only they ignore the existence of light.
During the day is easy to recognize the bright presence of the winged woman: she is a feather’s flight, a sun’s ray that light and playful insinuates itself among pieces of furniture or it bounces on roofs. During the night instead the balmy lightness of the winged woman seems to vanish: an oppressive sultriness increases the fatigue of sinking in a sleep burden with nightmares. Blinding nightmares forged in a dazzling hell – forge, nightmares that prevent their victims from seeing the salvific light of her eyes. You sink in blinding nightmares to emerge opening the eyes on what you have never seen before but this reawakening is not inexpensive: it happens thanks to rumble of the deadly blow that arouses crying. But the eyes suddenly open immediately perceive that the woman is there, alive and present even if her throat is bleeding and her wings are broken because of that very blow which has reawakened, wounded and killed human beings. She is there to announce the birth of the day from the night, she is there to testify the presence of life’s seed in death’s womb.
The winged woman lands among stakes erected on the shores of a torrent crowned by a tangle of thorny plants. She advances toward the torrent with tattered dress, under her feet sparkling shrubs are like burning coals but nothing will sway her from her mission: death’s night has transformed that torrent in a fish – pond where human tadpoles are waiting from her the salvation. The poet asks her not to extinguish the flames of the stakes where are burning those that cannot be saved: that death’s fire is the necessary complement of life’s water where survivors are embryos of a renewed humanity. Damnation’s fire is not the antithesis of angel – woman but a paradoxical instrument of her: thanks to that fire she can make visible her presence in this world and she can orientate herself in the night.