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 cocoanut 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.