Translated from Malay by Muhammad Haji Salleh 

Should You or I Go

You open before me

A map of your future,

In it are dreams and hopes;

You let them float along a road

That blurs into the silence.

To you I bring

An armful of books from my past –

See, they are stained by blood

That has since dried;

I love my past

More than the dreams of the future.

When There are no More Poems

As there are no more

Poems

Being written,

I choose

To read the dictionary.

Strange how, on these pages

I found you,

As in the old romances.

A Note for Zafirah

As you are my daughter

I love you excessively,

Though you often protest

That I am annoyed with you;

but I love and dote on you, endlessly.

As you slowly become a teenager

Learn to leave your house

And go to a distant school,

My father’s heart has

Become half-empty.

There is another half:

This heart of mine, now.

I know not

The face

Or colour

Of a father’s loneliness,

So that I may describe it to you.

Soon, when the flower blooms,

You will be further away;

Then with your own family,

Then children:

You well know how the heart of this middle-age man

Will be fully empty.

A father’s heart is always thus,

Strange, but always present.

Photo Credit: “Old books in Sarah’s house” by lungstruck is licensed under CC BY 2.0