I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset
was hiding its last gold like a miser
The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness,
and the widowed land,whose harvest had been reaped,lay silent.
Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky.He
traversed the dark unseen,leaving the track of his song across
the hush of the evening.
His village home lay there at the end of the wasted land,
beyond the sugar-cane field,hidden among the shadows of the
banana and the slender areca palm,the cocoa-nut and the dark
green jack-fruit trees.
I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the
starlight,and saw spread before me the darkened earth
surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with
cradles and beds,mothers' hearts and evening lamps,and young
lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing of its value for the world.