Have you ever slept with your eyes open? In the Kannada verses of Jayant Kaikini, what might seem like a curse is re-conceived as a gift: in the strange spectacle of people who sleep with their eyes open and unblinking, the speaker of the poem finds a symbol of the slow, deliberate attention we might bring to every second of our waking lives, missing nothing, finding something holy in every mundane thing, “every plant, pillar, post.” Writes translator Carol Blaizy D’Souza, “I have tried to pay special attention to the play woven into his poetry, to preserve the tenderness, the supple freshness of the narrator’s gaze.” Read on!
Their Eyes are Like That
People who are asleep with half-open eyes
Do not wake them up just in jest; their eyes are like that
Like a looted marketplace