Recently, I applied to teach English in Indonesia, and now I’m thinking about interning in Africa–Malawi or Ghana, to be specific. Here is one of my favourite poems from Indonesia:

Me, Chairil Anwar

When my time comes
No one’s going to cry for me,
And you won’t, either

The hell with all those tears!

I’m a wild beast
Driven out of the herd

Bullets may pierce my skin
But I’ll keep coming,

Carrying forward my wounds and my pain
Attacking
Attacking
Until suffering disappears

And I won’t give a damn

I want to live another thousand years

(translated by Burton Raffel)

Anwar, Chairil. “Me.” The Poetry of Our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jeffrey Paine et al. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. 427.