"The Kiss" - Shuntaro Tanikawa (b. 1931)

As eyes are closing the world goes away,
only the weight of tenderness assures me infinitely....

Silence turns into a quiet night
encircling us like a promise,
it now is not an estranging thing,
rather a tender farness that surrounds us
so therefor we by chance become lonely....

We search together
in a way that is more certain than to speak or look
and we discover
when we lose ourselves--

I wonder what I wanted to assure;
tenderness which returned from a long way off.
Losing words in purified silence
you now only just breathing.

You indeed now are life itself....
but even these words are punishable
presently when tenderness fills the world
and I fall down so I may live in it.

- translated by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Yuki Sawa