Me and my companion

We walk together late at night

Piercing the fog

Soaked to the bone with the rain

The boats in the harbor look frozen.

My blood ices up. I feel stiff.

Who’s talking...?

No more than a skeleton’s my companion

His energy’s gone with the torture.

He asks me: “What time is it?”

It is now very very late,

Such that nothing means a thing now,

And motion signifies nothing.

June 5, 1943

Chairil Anwar
after the French translation of Louis-Charles Damais