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 waste land,
beyond the sugar-cane field, hidden among the shadows of the banana
and the slender areca palm, the coconut 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, mother’s
hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that
knows nothing of its value for the world.