Muhammad Haji Salleh has written several volumes of poetry in Malay, and one solitary volume, Times and its People (1978), in English. Here is one of his English poems.

do not say
by Muhammad Haji Salled (1942)

do not say my people are lazy
because you do not know.
you are only a critic, an onlooker.
you cannot know or judge,
passing the kampong in your car,
staring at economic data.

do not think my people are weak
because they are gentle,
because they do not build skyscrapers.
have you ever worked in a lading,
or danced the ronggeng?
can you sing the dondang saying?
do not think that we have only music
because we love life.

do not write that we have no literature, culture.
have you ever listened to the sajak or pantun
stayed a night at the bangsawan?
have you read the epic shairs
or the theological theses?
how many times have you wondered about history in the blade
and ancestry in he handle of the keris,
or felt the pattern of the songket?
have you lived in a kampong?

do not condemn us as poor
because we have very few banks.
see, here the richness of our people,
the brimful hearts that do not grab or grapple.
we collect humanity from sun and rain and man,
transcending the business and the money,

do not tell us how to live
or organise such nice associations and bodies,
our society was an entity
before the advent of political philosophy,

do not say –
because you do not know.