(translated by alan levi stark)
On clear evenings
hot-air balloons
appear in the sky.
Like upside-down pears,
they slowly drift past,
the flames below their envelopes
flaring up now and then.
And one imagines
going up in one of them;
the ropes swayed by the wind,
the basket hanging over the void;
and, spread below,
the familiar geography of a life:
fields of hope, hills of adventure,
dark woods where dreams faltered,
a few unforgotten grim towns
and the long, twisting
roads of regret:
all of them small,
distant, harmonious
and almost unimportant now
as the day slowly fades.
