THIS week I want to reflect upon Chairil Anwar, as others do, but I want to add a brief note. Soon after Chairil Anwar died on 18 April 1949, he began to be solely associated with his poem Aku: the ‘wild beast’ (‘binatang jalang’) shouting that he wanted to live for another thousand years.

I know that poets are analyzed to death. And yet somehow their poetry can always liberate them.

The way I see it, Chairil’s poems start with someth