return to poetrydust
Derita Pertama
The First Sadness
Adam was our father
who was thrown into a strange new world,
For trying to find more of heaven
behind the taste of a fruit.
In this new world he cannot sleep
There is time- it's midnight- he is still
blinking, uncomprehending, speechless.
He looks around and
cannot fathom this new place
Alternating between day and dark, between heaven and hell
He does not know why the clouds move, inch away
All night he cannot rest
The deepest sadness flows painfully through the cracks in his heart.
So uncertain if he will brave this new world
By himself, without his other half.
All night, the moon splits into the earth with his tears.
by Suhaimi Haji Muhamad, Lagu Kehidupan (1990) and the Anak
Laut anthology
---
(The Original Poem)
Adam ialah bapa kita
yang tercampak dari seberang dunia
kerana mencari syurga
di celah buah khuldi.
Waktu terlantar di dunia baru
hari tengah malam
ia tidak mengerti apa yang terjadi
mulutnya bisu.
Ia melihat sekeliling
mulai merasa cemas akan kegelapan
segumpal awan hinggap ke kening
ia tidak tahu apakah itu.
Sepanjang malam ia tercengang
dari hatinya mengalir sungai duka
bagaimana akan kutempuh rimba kegelapan
tubuh seorang.
Sepanjang malam air matanya membelah muka bulan.
---
I actually don't care much for Malaysian poetry. It's phonically nice to
read out, and for the language it's soothing to the ear when executed properly, but
to me most of the poetry is lacklustre in meaning. I find myself translating the poems in
the anthology assigned to us in Malay literature class out of boredom and lack of
attention to the teacher. I don't take the act of this too seriously, but to my knowledge
the translations are accurate and I do put them up when I'm done.
It's in the Quran (Koran) that when God first placed Adam and Eve on Earth, he separated
them. The last line was especially hard to translate, I went from "tears flow across
the moon" to "moon sinks into the earth", trying to achieve the right
translation. "membelah" is slice. and "muka" is face, where
"bulan" is the moon. The right effect is hard to achieve in English when it
clearly isn't the literal one.
Update: Retranslated it into what I feel is a more accurate translation of the poem. After reading translations of Borges and Rilke, I'm beginning to grasp the real importance of accuracy in translation.