Credo

I report on what people believe because belief is the part of a life that does not show up in a budget line, and it decides more than the budget does.

I wanted to be a journalist since I was eight, and I was afraid of running out of subjects, so I learned a language nobody around me spoke and went to find some. The poems are the other half of that.

I translate them because Indonesian says some things Russian cannot, and Russian says some things English cannot, and the gap between them is where I have spent my working life.

From the translations

Tak ada yang lebih tabah
Dari hujan bulan Juni

“There is nothing more steadfast than the June rain.”
— Sapardi Djoko Damono