Pond: The eyes of an old freedom fighter
sitting by the roadside
Tree: A bare flagpole
left standing, gone weak
Moon: The still sliver of bread
moving among the ants
Sun: The shining crown of an infant
in a cloth cradle
River: The panting breath trail
of a girl, runaway from home
Rainbow: The shard of bangles
breaking in Kamathipura
Day: A scrap newspaper lying
before a jobless boy
Bird: An old rag hurled from the balcony,
solely for refugees
Night: The dizziness from roaming about,
searching for an old friend
Harmony: A twister of tender voices
wound in Sivakasi crackers
Poem: The lines of an unwritten letter
by someone who has no address of his own
Dawn: The song heard by a mute
when half-awake
Rrupp rrupp heavy rain falls on the metal sheet head
Spurred on further by the jolting bumps, the bus
descends into a sea of clouds
All around, liquid darkness
Beyond the water, peacock hills melt
Inside, sigh shut-eye secret small bundle sack
in a posture of splintered wakefulness
With a dim lamp lit even in daytime,
the bus sloshes
like a half-filled pot of light
startled suddenly on turns
All along we had thought
only the driver knew all things beyond
But before him now a stark glass of fear
keeps moving aside
wildly lunging strange water
in a lone continuous battle
Waking up at dawn, you should walk
to that hill
There, a berry tree
standing on the edge
even in the grey of dawn keeps contemplating its own being
without swaying in the air
When a night
slips from its hands,
standing right there, in the abyss ahead
you can see
a new play of dazzling light
Wonder who said light has no sound?
Behold, the invisible harmony
Rising from the pulsing nerves, new directions
as if chirp awake
everything to everything
Before the hearth, brightening,
sitting up awake from familiar sleep,
mother’s unfamiliar face
In the hearth,
a snapping, crumbling forest
Translator | Carol Blaizy D Souza
Carol Blaizy D’Souza is a poet, translator and researcher living in Chennai. She is currently (July, 2025) reading, among many many things, A Painter of Our Time by John Berger and Listening to the Loom: Essays on Literature, Politics and Violence by D. R. Nagaraj. A collation of her work can be found at linktr.ee/cblaizd.
Author | Jayant Kaikini
Jayant Kaikini (1955) is a Kannada poet, short story writer, lyricist, script and dialogue writer. He is a recipient of many accolades. Multiple Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Awards, the inaugural Kusumagraj Rashtriya Bhasha Sahitya Puraskar, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, B. H. Sridhar award for fiction, Dinakar Desai award for poetry, Rujuwathu trust fellowship and the Katha National award to name only a few. Among his body of work are six poetry collections, four essay collections, seven short story collections and three plays. He has more than two-decade long creative association with the Kannada film and television industries as a presenter, screen writer and lyricist. The hit film song Anisutide that he penned shot him to mass popularity. His short stories have been previously translated in selected anthologies such as Dots and Lines translated by Vishvanath Hulikal (Indialog Publications, 2004), the award winning No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories translated by Tejaswini Niranjana (Harper Perennial, 2017) and Mithun Number Two and Other Mumbai Stories also translated by Niranjana (Westland Books, 2024).
Kaikini was born in Gokarna. He has worked in the cities of Mumbai and Hyderabad and now lives in Bangalore.
