The poetry of Sutan Syarif is discussed in relation to the view that stories are told to give a moral lesson. Sometimes the moral lesson given is biased. The degree of that bias depends on the purpose of writing the text and on which side the sriter takes. This is related to power or authority.Therefore, a conflict arises between desire and the law, a dialectic of rememberance and forgetfulness. In the poetry of Sultan Syarif, there is the conflict between the authority of the Malay and the authority of the Dutch.Acccording of the writer, the former is the real one because it brings the true religion and the latter is a false one. Victory is therefore on the side of the Malay authority. This discussion of the Poerty of Sultan Syarif attempts to show how through a dialectic of rememberance and forgetfullness of those in power.Syarief tries to create a consolatory vision of the past. The manuscript is a coppy written when the Dutch occupied the Malay land.The forgetfullness conceals the identity of the Malay authority; it becomes visible only as the vagueness of the setting and the characters involved.