My own Villanelle

Waiting for You

When will we meet again in a bright sunny day?
Butterflies are free to fly on their own,
Do you see the sun, reflecting its ray?

I remembered the "run and catch" that we used to play,
When we were kids and had cute feet we'd shown.
When will we meet again in a bright sunny day?

As I recalled, Janda Baik, at the chalet we did stay,
Swimming at the river together we'd almost drowned.
Do you see the sun, reflecting its ray?

Together on the green grass we did lay,
Capturing photos creating a memory that all had known.
When will we meet again in a bright sunny day?

At Kerja Kahwin the 'uncle' enjoy playing with the clay,
Starting to make a beautiful pottery of his own.
Do you see the sun, reflecting its ray?

Waiting for your arrival - it's already May,
Within these days, refreshing our past memories and now we'd grown,
When will we meet again in a bright sunny day?
Do you see the sun, reflecting its ray?

Note 1: After I'd learned about villanelle and as I recalled Miss Sheena's lecture, I was thinking of creating my own one. Above is the first villanelle written by myself. Well, it might not look good and seems unpleasant to be read compared to other villanelles, but I will consider it as a worth try. Hey, what do you expect from a beginner poet like me, right? It's so common you know to produce a not very so-called beautiful poetry of our own at the beginning. People do mistakes and we shall learn from those mistakes to give our best in everything. So, here I want to show to all that we seek knowledge not just for the sake of examination, but for our own benefits in the future and the most important thing is, of course, to achieve His blessings because we know that seeking for knowledge is one of His commands and as a caliph we must obey Him without questioning anything. Another thing is that I want to prove to all how much I'm in love with poetry now and I dare to challenge myself in order to prove my love towards poetry or else literature. So then I'd come out with my first villanelle. When I compared mine with Dylan Thomas's, well, it's not that bad. It's a good starter I shall say. Of course I won't be able to produce as beautiful as his, but at least I'd tried my best and I bet he himself will be proud of me for trying to write my own villanelle. Please don't misunderstand from my statements. I'm not trying to show of my ability writing a poetry, it's just that I want to encourage all to value and appreciate literature (esp. poetry), inherited by our ancestors and to ensure that poetry would not die just like that and become extinct. We should preserve poetry not just English poetry or from other languages but also poetry form our own bahasa ibunda, the most wonderful and polite language in the world (in my opinion), Bahasa Melayu.

Note 2: Inspired by Miss Sheena's lecture and the poem Lonely Hearts written by Wendy Cope, I have come out with my own villanelle to practice my poetry skills. This villanelle titled Waiting for You I wrote especially to my sister, who now studies at Cairo University, Egypt doing her degree in Medication. Maybe I often think about her these days and miss her a lot until I heard a deep voice inside of me whispering to me and telling me to write a special poem to show my remembrance towards her. Well, above is the result. Waiting for You might seem very not-so-creative enough as you can see the words and sentences used in it are quite simple and understandable, yet it's my first effort in poetry. Insya Allah, I would produce the more advance villanelle next time, after mastering my poetry skills each day. In this poem, I clarified brief memories I'd built with my sister, Kak Uda, when she was still in Malaysia. In the second and third stanzas, I described our past memories playing the "run and catch" game during our childhood and swimming together in the river at Janda Baik (followed our father who had to attend his work program). I really miss those moments. We were still young girls and played together what ever we wanted. But now, things have changed. We can no longer play "run and catch" because we're already big girls and Kak Uda will be someone's wife so soon. In stanzas four and five, I explained about our memories when the moment we took photos on the grass at Perth, Australia We lied down, ignoring about our surroundings and captured as many photos as we liked and the time when we visited Kerja Kahwin exhibition at Titiwangsa and watched a man doing his pottery. It was very fascinating and we enjoyed ourselves very much. So, when will we meet again in a bright sunny day, I wonder. Perhaps, one day. It's not that long to wait for her coming. All I need to do is be patience and pray may God protect her journey from any harms. And when she come back, I'll spend all the time left with her before she moved 'out' and being with 'others' family.

p/s: Kak Uda, this is just for you!

Wallahua'lam.


With love,

Qamar