APIN, Rivai

Poem for my little brother

The days are getting shorter,

Fingers stiffen, chilled by the night

They cannot give things their final shape.

Can we still hear

The old dreams singing?

Must we?

Let the twilight cover over the day

And we’ll watch with our stiff eyes.

Tomorrow there’ll be another day

But it will be getting shorter.


Putusan

see the muddy water

without knowing how deep it is

jump right in
don’t hesitate!

dive in, or if you don’t
sink

later you will come tot he bottom
and know how deep it is
(and whether it is noce or not)


A Beautiful Night

What song has risen tonight
that sways crystalline echoes of the heart
to stars!

What a spring festival
of the marrying heart!

I was an unchanging pool of darkness

Now I bite space like a baby at the breast
Now I am drunk with the universe


Pass through the day, penetrate the night

Before the young girls grow to adolescence,
Before the leaves turn green and the flowers open in fresh colours,
Squeezed aside, where the boundaries can only be felt

- and he will not falter, he has to be true to his creed -

Tears will incise his cheeks

thoughts will burn his heart,

leaving him wasted and dry after being aflame.

The end of rains has brought forth
and blown and spread about

the dry breath of mortality,

Truth is joy in the first explosion

From behind the walls along the lanes

death keeps constant watch

Man is but a child of a few short hours.

This Son of Mantoday knows only broken dreams,

birds at the end of their song.

And his heart, split rocks on a dry field, withered of hope

His mouth now washed with bitterness

his chest constricts, dragging him heavily into the grave