The Home

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser.

The daylight sand 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 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.

家庭_郑振铎 译

我独自在横跨过田地的路上走着，夕阳像一个守财奴似的，正藏起它的最后的金子。

白昼更加深沉地没入黑暗之中，那已经收割了的孤寂的田地，默默地躺在那里。

天空里突然升起了一个男孩子的尖锐的歌声。他穿过看不见的黑暗，留下他的歌声的辙痕跨过黄昏的静谧。

他的乡村的家坐落在荒凉的边上，在甘蔗田的后面，躲藏在香蕉树、瘦长的槟榔树、椰子树和深绿色的贾克果树的阴影里。

我在星光下独自走着的路上停留了一会儿，我看见黑沉沉的大地展开在我的面前，用她的手臂拥抱着无量数的家庭，在那些家庭里有着摇篮和床铺，母亲们的心和夜晚的灯，还有年轻轻的生命，他们满心欢乐，却浑然不知这样的欢乐对于世界的价值。