In just three short lines, this poem puts us at a meal in the Australian outback as the sun goes down. The key moment is the image of the land "biting off" some of the sun. Instead of saying the sun sets or sinks, the speaker makes the horizon sound like a mouth, and the hill like a set of teeth taking a bite out of something round and glowing. It's a clever echo of the meal itself: while the people eat dinner, the landscape seems to be eating too.
The speaker doesn't tell us directly how they feel, but the tone suggests quiet wonder, with a touch of humor. The image is playful, almost like watching a cookie lose its edge, yet the land also feels large and a little powerful, able to take what it wants from the sky. The mood is calm and unhurried, the kind of hush that settles over a group of people watching the light fade. The poem leaves us feeling small, but comfortably so.