Before Dawn is a poetry collection written by Sapardi Djoko Damono: with contents written from 1961 to 2001, portraying the poet at different stages of life. Opened by “One Night”, written in 1964 when he was a young Moslem boy crying outside a church door as his classmates celebrated Christmas, the book ends with “Before Dawn”, written in 2001 when he was much older, pondering about frailty and mortality. Through his poems—the meaning, the sounds, the rhythm—Sapardi has proven himself capable of depicting the imaginative awareness of experience.

Translated by: John H. McGlynn