Poetry
Keluh Kesah
Not translated into English
Pungguk · 1934
Synopsis
Laments: a man who calls himself abang tells of his sorrow for the beloved he calls adik, from one moment of the day to the next. At dusk, when the birds take flight, adik's sadness breaks his heart; in the depths of the night, his lamentations mingle with the memory of a child deprived of its mother; at dawn, troubled dreams make him believe adik carried off by the sea; in the morning, when everyone returns to work, he forgets the hour of prayer.
Context
The poem appeared in 1934 in Majalah Guru, along with other pieces by the author, a year after his first poem, Di Tengah Segara. Its four stanzas each open on a different hour, from evening to dawn and then full day. Historians of Malay poetry see in its author the link between the pantun and the modern poem, and the national language institute devoted a monograph to him in 2019 that hails him as the founder of the genre.
Who it is for
A short poem of four quatrains in Malay, simple and regular, which exists neither in French nor in English.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the very first modern poems in the Malay language, it appears in the country's anthologies and school textbooks.
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