Chairil’s poetic vitality was never in balance with his physical condition, which grew weaker as a result of his chaotic lifestyle. Before he could turn twenty-seven, he had already contracted a number of illnesses. In the last days of his life, he wrote a poem that read thus:
The Seized and the Severed the darkness and passing wind overtake me
and the room where the one I long for shivers with night’s penetration; trees stand like dead memorials but in Karet, yes, Karet Cemetery – my future locale – there, the wind howls, too.
I put my room in order, and myself as well, in the chance that you might come and I may once again unleash a new story for you; but now it’s only my hands that move, emptily my body is still and alone, as frozen stories and events pass by On April 28, 1949, Chairil Anwar passed away at the CBZ Hospital (now R.S. Ciptomangunkusomo) in Jakarta. And indeed, he was buried at Karet Cemetery the next day. In memory of the words he left behind, April 28th is now celebrated as Literature Day in Indonesia.
POEMS OF CHAIRIL ANWAR
My Friend And I
For L.K. Bohang
We share the same path, late at night
with the fog, penetrating
and the rain, drenching our bodies.
Ships freeze in the harbor.
My blood curdles. My mind congeals.
Who is it that speaks?
My friend is but a skeleton
scourged of his strength.
He asks the time!
It is so late.
All meaning has sunk and drowned
and motion has no purpose.
(1943)
No, Woman!
No, woman! What lives in me
still easily evades your fevered and dark embrace,
intent on finding the greenness of another sea,
to be again on the ship where we first met,
surrendering the rudder to the wind,
our eyes fixed on waiting stars.
Something flapping its wings, again conveys
Tai Po and the secret of the Ambonese Sea.
Such is woman! A single vague line
is all I can write
in my flight towards her enigmatic smile.
(1945)
Announcement
To dictate is not my intent,
Fate is separate loneliness-es.
I choose you from among the rest, but
in a moment we are snared by loneliness once more.
There was a time I truly wanted you,
to be as children in crowning darkness,
and we kissed and fondled, not tiring.
I did not want to ever let you go.
Do not unite your life with mine,
for I cannot be with anyone for very long
I write now on a ship, in some nameless sea.
(1946)
Pines in the Distance
Pines scatter in the distance,
as day becomes night,
branches slap weakly at the window,
pushed by a sultry wind.
I’m now a person who can survive,
so long ago I left childhood behind,
though once there was something,
that now counts for nothing at all.
Life is but postponement of defeat,
a growing estrangement from youth’s unfettered love
a knowing there’s always something left unsaid,
before we finally acquiesce.
(1949)
Oleh
