A Lullaby To Put Us To Sleep

A lullaby to put us to sleep, so that we may dream. A song called a Northstar.

The gesture of sleeping - where does it occur? Head bouncing on the window of a bus; hands folded on a bench and the head resting on it, a class perhaps; a baby engulfed in the mother's embrace. So many gestures of sleep. In some places sleep is welcomed, even invited, such as a mother's relief when the baby sleeps after a maddening bout of weeping. At some places, sleep is sacrilege, such as in a class in school. Here one must stay awake at all costs. The worst thing one can do is sleep. Here one comes to “awaken”, not just literally but in spirit. Perhaps we should not mistake the point of sleep. We don't sleep to get rest. We sleep so that we may dream. In that dream is our rest, in that dream is our world. And that kind of sleep is the one we must welcome at all places.

And what about songs? A song can be sung or hummed. And sometimes the way things are - the smell, the objects, the arrangement, the memory, the complete gestalt becomes a song. The gesture of singing must come before the gesture of sleeping, and when the song is by Kabir, it may wake us up in our sleep.

And here are some lines from Kabir

My translation: