yusuf achmad
My poem questions me sharply, stirring my restless soul.
In the silence without a voice. In a room both bright and dim.
My poem asks me about anxiety and solitude—
Two different things, yet somehow the same.
It mocks me, as if I fear only God, and nothing else.
My poem rebukes me loudly—because it knows.
Not God who unsettles me,
But my own self, and the devils.
Or other beings that trouble the mind.
It trusts not those who claim to be fearless.
The one who walks alone, who befriends the quiet.
In night’s cloak, or in empty space, without a soul—
That too is fear, it says.
For it believes that dreading silence and solitude
Is also a form of fear.
It grows uneasy, enraged,
When its quiet and aloneness are disturbed by clamor.
That, too, is fear, just the same—so it repeats.
Isn’t anxiety and solitude pure and sacred?
When anxiety is offered to God, not toy gods.
Finding pleasure in fear, in loneliness,
Then fleeing the crowd
As if God cannot be found there.
