The Way To Father's Grave

Beat in the fumy heat,
among the seared pines,
Barren was the hilly path
that led to Father's grave
where red earth dyed my garment red.
O even thus far stretched up
the new-built road where labourers
are stopping under their gravel load.
At this bare height with wilted grass,
where no cicadas sing,
my homeland folk are making yet
another road that leads somewhither.

The dynamite reverberates in the sequestered valleys and hills; And a memorial tablet stands, long since unheeded, ruinous, before the village desolate.

Father! O departed!
Leaving this mound where death lies deep
on this red hill, unvisited,
and this within my bosom, thus ......

What have I come to tell you here?
In the drouthy heat of dry stream-beds,
refractory was the hilly path
that led to Father's grave.