Between Two Worlds

That morning, when I heard the news, I went into the street:
vendors and passersby walked close to the walls
for tanks and trucks will not wait for anyone.
And some who were armed strolled in twos,
between them a void of still humanity, all things frozen:
men and objects, even the air . . . and yet they were alive.

I went to friends; the words were lost in darkness.
News: Jogja has fallen, Maguwo . . . Sukarno arrested, Hat la, Sjahrir . . .
We talked and talked and visited more friends;
we talked, discussed and looked into the future
that flowed from the word Freedom and flowed for Freedom.

In the evening full of news and possibilities
I was welcomed home by my unext inguished self
and the open book as yet unread, and the unfinished book that had to be read.

It is for this I have left both father and brother . . .
And I remembered only one meal had been cooked that day.
The rice pan lay uncovered, and I buried myself
in the grave dug out of the gloom by the light of the lamp.

And on that night, stampeding boots had echoed in the dark,
and when they had gone, the women had cried, wives and mothers.
There is no need to say what they took away.
I could baiter my head against the wood,
my head whirling with the one word Freedom, unfulfilled,
reaching toward as yet an unborn world.