You know it: I must lose you again and can’t

You know it: I must lose you again and can’t.
Like a well-aimed gunshot, every action
startles me, every cry, and even the salt
breeze that brims over
the docks, clouds the spring
of Sottoripa.

Landscape of iron and shipmasts,
a forest in the dusty vespers.
A prolonged buzzing comes from the open air,
grates like a fingernail on windows. I search
for the lost sign, the only pledge of grace
I had from you.
And Inferno is certain.

(Eugenio Montale, Le occasioni.
Translated from the Italian
by Katherine Jackson)