Fire Sermon

Robert Gray

The lissome（柔软的） bay is silvered slightly, in its supine lightness;

 a stocking-textured water 

 takes the morning's cerise（樱桃色）. 

But soon, between the headlands, sea and sky are solid blues 

 that have closed, almost 

 seamlessly, like stone. 

And yachts have come out to climb on the sea's face, slow 

 and wavering -- the way 

 that cabbagemoths walk. 

These foreshores are deeply tented in eucalyptus saplings 

 and tea-trees, leaned 

 on the engorged light. 

Here cicadas' sizzling strapped toffee strings of sound, 

 filmy and flashing, fuse 

 into sheets, all around. 

Now the rhythmical light-points shoal the water thickly 

 as the shift to shoveled 

 gravel in cicadas' song. 

Simmered eucalyptus oil vaporously uncoils, accompanying 

 angophoras, the dancing 

 Indras of rosy stone. 

Dilated summer. It seems you can see into the Flame, while 

 light-cells teem, cicadas thrum, 

 to its naked sensuous（感觉上的） events. 

On the far shore, house-faces are hung, white muslin among 

 bush humble as rubble 

 in the blue Empire. 

I have left everything behind, for an endpaper shore; to lie 

 under membranous layers, as 

 lights vault, coagulate（凝结 ）, rebound—

to see one ignite another, billowing, and genealogies decline; 

 to watch here day's ardor（热情，狂热） 

 that turns water into wine.