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Kami yang kini terbaring antara Krawang-Bekasi
tidak bisa teriak “Merdeka” dan angkat senjata lagi.
Tapi siapakah yang tidak lagi mendengar deru kami,
terbayang kami maju dan mendegap hati ?

Kami bicara padamu dalam hening di malam sepi
Jika dada rasa hampa dan jam dinding yang berdetak
Kami mati muda. Yang tinggal tulang diliputi debu.
Kenang, kenanglah kami.

Kami sudah coba apa yang kami bisa
Tapi kerja belum selesai, belum bisa memperhitungkan arti 4-5 ribu nyawa

Kami cuma tulang-tulang berserakan
Tapi adalah kepunyaanmu
Kaulah lagi yang tentukan nilai tulang-tulang berserakan

Atau jiwa kami melayang untuk kemerdekaan kemenangan dan harapan
atau tidak untuk apa-apa,
Kami tidak tahu, kami tidak lagi bisa berkata
Kaulah sekarang yang berkata

Kami bicara padamu dalam hening di malam sepi
Jika ada rasa hampa dan jam dinding yang berdetak

Kenang, kenanglah kami
Teruskan, teruskan jiwa kami
Menjaga Bung Karno
menjaga Bung Hatta
menjaga Bung Sjahrir

Kami sekarang mayat
Berikan kami arti
Berjagalah terus di garis batas pernyataan dan impian

Kenang, kenanglah kami
yang tinggal tulang-tulang diliputi debu
Beribu kami terbaring antara Krawang-Bekasi

Chairil Anwar (1948)
Brawidjaja, Jilid 7, No 16, 1957


[Krawang-Bekasi]
--translated by Burton Raffel

We who are lying, now, near Krawang-Bekasi,
We can no longer cry out “Freedom,” no longer lift our rifles

But who cannot still hear our moans?
Still see us marching forward, unafraid?

We speak to you out of the suspended silence of evening
When the chest feels empty, when clocks tick away time

We died young. All that remains of us: bones covered with dust.
Remember, remember us!

We’ve tried, done all we could
But the job isn’t finished, is hardly begun

We’ve given the lives we had
The job isn’t finished, no one can count up, still, the meaning of four thousand,
of five thousand lives

We are only scattered bones
But they belong to you
And you will decide the value of these scattered bones
Either we died for freedom, for victory, for hope

Or for nothing.
We don’t know, we can no longer say
Only you can speak, now

We speak to you out of the suspended silence of evening
When the chest feels empty, when clocks tick away time

Remember, remember us—
Let our lives live on
Guarding Soekarno
Guarding Hatta
Guarding Sjahrir

We are corpses
Give us meaning
Keep watch over the frontier between reality and illusion

Remember, remember us
Who survive only in these bones covered with dust
Thousands of us, lying near Krawang-Bekasi.


．Burton Raffel, ed. & trans., The Complete Poetry and Prose of Chairil Anwar,
Albany : State University of New York Press, 1970, pp. 126-129.