I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset washiding its last gold like a miser. The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and thewidowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent. Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky.
He traversedthe dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush ofthe evening. His village home lay there at the end of the waste land,beyond the sugar-cane field, hidden among the shadows of the bananaand 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 herarms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mother'shearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness thatknows nothing of its value for the world.
