It is the hour when launches cross the lake
and black diagonal wakes remain
beside the jetty.
Children, voices: the landscape
is losing precision and shading.
I see the painter thrown, the yellow anomaly
of lifejackets, leaping, one by one, to earth.
Soon, enormous, the southern sky
will be above us.
All present, all provisional,
no traces left in the water, nor does one night
retain the memory of the others.
It is a miracle Orion's belt
always fits his waistline.
Gravity, I heard said,
is the secret of the day that's ending
and of stars that do not collapse.
Of gravity are made: round hours,
we ourselves, the tremor left by a fish
jumping in the lake.

Translated by Julian Cooper