from With Silence My Companion: Poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa

Sound becoming sound
had begun to infest the blank white paper,
like mosquito larvae.

Urged
out of the void of his healed lungs and heart,
air is exhaled
to mingle with the air of spring.

No one is listening
but all ears are open; and now,
as wind purls a lace curtain,
come the savage cries of children at play.

Where sound had begun to wiggle
in one corner of that spacious sheet,
now a whole galaxy swirls . . . distantly.

(Translated by William I. Elliott and Kazao Kawamura)