CIX
        EVERYTHING PASSES

The red earth, the deep blue sky, the harsh
sun reaches it zenith and sends out
its beams; it is the hottest time of the day;
the green leaves on the hill become dark.

In the rounded shadow of the immobile
black evergreen oak, the immobile black
bull is resting, and a pond becomes
a motionless mirror of silent water.

Vision is suspended like a veneer
over the recently forged oven of calm,
and it fills the space with quietude;

but, alas!, whenever eternity distracts us,
as a reminder of what is to come,
the cicada chirps the instants of time.