01.家  THE HOME
 
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 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.
 
我獨自漫步在穿過田野的小徑上，夕陽像個守財奴，正藏起它最後一塊金子。
 
白晝逐漸沒入更深沉的黑暗中，而那已收割的寂地，靜靜躺在那兒。
 
頃時間，有個男孩的高亢歌聲響入雲霄。他穿過看不見的黑幕，讓歌聲音韻迴盪在夜晚的寂靜中。
 
他村裡的家就坐落這塊荒地底端，甘蔗園後邊，隱藏在芭蕉、瘦長的檳榔樹、椰子樹和深綠色波羅蜜果樹影裡。
 
我在星空下的寂路上佇立了一會兒，看著暗沉的大地於我面前展開，用她的雙臂攬抱無數個家庭，那裡有搖籃和床，有母親的心和夜燈，還有滿心歡喜的年輕生命，渾然不知這歡樂對世界的價值。