A Stopover Place

-
This poem is by Agustina Hartini fcJ and translated by Audrey. The original Indonesian is below.


So deeply touched is my heart to see your face
What relief to find a stopover place
It is enough to sleep soundly for one night
After enjoying an evening meal.
Tomorrow… whatever
The day after… leave it
The future… we surrender it
Do I dare to hope… maybe not
Do I dare to step forward… I don’t know the way
Do I dare to change… I don’t know what should be changed.

*****

Hatiku trenyuh melihat wajahmu
Wajah kelegaan temukan persinggahan
Cukup satu malam tidur nyaman
Setelah menikmati makan malam.
Besok, . . . entahlah
Lusa, . . . . biarlah
Masa depan, . . .  kami pasrah
Apakah berani berharap, . . . rasanya tidak
Apakah berani melangkah, . . . ku tak tahu arah
Apakah berani berubah, aku tak tahu apa yang harus diubah.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Musings on 'Mulan': Becoming Who We Are

-
Image
I had the chance to watch Disney’s “Mulan” 2020 recently. It is not a genre of movie I am usually a fan of, but somehow - quite surprisingly - it stuck with me and I resolved to write a blog post about it. (Warning: spoilers to follow!)  *****  Becoming Who I Am  But where to begin? There are so many reasons why this movie is thought-provoking (aside from its "behind the scenes" controversies, which are not the subject of this post). At base, perhaps, is that it is a coming-of-age story... a story about someone discovering their own unique gifts and using them... a kind of story that never gets old, as we are all living it to some extent, young or old. I used to think that coming-of-age was something that happens once when you are a teenager or young adult, but at 33 - an age at which I used to think my life path would be settled - I am discovering that the process goes on! Perhaps at certain ages one wrestles with the question of “who I am” in a more pointed and existent...
Read more

Building Meaningful Community

-
Image
Two acquaintances of mine are going to set aside all other commitments this year to spend six months living with a small group of people from different countries, whom they don’t yet know. With this little international community, they will practice living simply, do some studying, and then go out to share their faith with other people. I was surprised to hear of their plans, and even more to hear that in recent years more young Catholics in Singapore have been showing interest in similar ventures. “It was really the idea of community that drew me to this,” one of them explained to me. Funnily enough, the other friend had the opposite perspective: “What made me doubtful about this was whether I could accept living in community,” she said. “I like living on my own and having my own space.” Despite their seemingly different viewpoints, I think they were both united in realising the centrality of community in the work they were going to undertake. They could see that community li...
Read more

A Love that Believes: Happy Fathers' Day

-
Image
One of my earliest memories of my father is of him driving me to school. I must have been about 7 or 8. I have never been good at early mornings, and was half asleep in the car. When we got to the school’s side gate, he stopped the car and I managed to get out, blinking sleepily on the pavement. He got out too, came round the side of the car, and bent down to give me a good-bye kiss. Then I walked up the school steps, knowing he would watch a while and then get back into the car and drive off to that mysterious place called “work”. What he did there we never knew, but we knew we would see him again when he came back in the evening. As a child I was always aware of “Dad” as a faithful and tender presence. He could always be relied on to drive us around when we needed a ride, to school or to church. He never went to church himself, not being Catholic, but must have spent countless hours waiting around outside for us to finish. He would be persuaded to come in, though, for special oc...
Read more