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I'm drunk with that voice

I'm drunk with that voice
archaic sea,
pouring from your mouths when they gape
like green bells and are shocked
back and dissolved.
The house of my distant summers,
as you know, belonged to you
there in that country of scorching suns
and low air fogged with midges.
Stunned now, as I once was, in your presence
I no longer believe myself worth
the solemn exhortation of your breath.
It was you who first taught me
my heart's puny tumult
was only a moment of yours --
that at bottom I kept your hazardous
law: to be vast and various
yet steady:
and so to purge myself of rubbish
as you do, hurling on the beaches
among starfish corks seaweed
the waste of your abyss.

(Eugenio Montale, Ossi di seppia; Mediterraneo)