To the painter Affandi

If, having nothing more to say, I do not dare

any more to enter my own house and stand

on the threshold cluttered with debris,

It’s by dint of the fragility

marking all things and because I feel

death will take the lot,

Then, my hand will be stiff, I shall cease to write

in the anguish of suffering, in the fright of my dreams.

Grant me a place in the high tower

where you have managed to hoist yourself!

Looking over the world’s agitation and conflicts,

the mosaic of forms and the erring ways of thought

you turn away and abandon yourself to adoration

and so open and illumine what had been dark and closed!

Chairil Anwar
after the French translation of Louis-Charles Damais