Yasushi Inoue Translated by Dennis Keene
The stone steps went steep down to the water's surface. At high tide they were covered halfway up, but when the tide was out the lowest cleared the water, covered with seaweed and small shells.
When I was there washing my hands one early evening, the soap suddenly slipped from me. As if alive it tailed and flipped in the water, and then was gone, sunken in those depths. Later I felt an enormous sense of loss, because no matter what I did it would not come back twice into my hands.
This happened when I was a boy, and since then I have never had a loss quite so complete as that. For I had understood that river light, that light still held in water when the rest is dark, is different from all other forms of light, a light preceding tragedy's last curtain.