I sing a song of my native village
When everyone is deep in sleep
Under wet stars, under wild winds
Finding their way home.

Somewhere a man speaks in his sleep
Beside a woman's streaming hair;
Somewhere the smell of a mother's milk
Flows into the night;
Somewhere the breasts of girls of fifteen
Rise from the land like shoots.
And somewhere the coughs of old villagers
Fall from branches like ripe fruit
And grass wakes up lonely in the garden.

I sing a song of my native village
In the light of the oil lamp
Left by my ancestors
The loveliest and saddest of lamps.
When I was born my mother placed it
Before me that I might look and learn
To be sad, to love, and to cry.

I sing a song of my native village.
I sing through my navel cord
Which was buried there
And became an earthworm
Crawling under the water jar
Crawling by the edge of the pond
Crawling through my ancestors' graves
Crawling through the paupers' graves
Pushing up red earth in its path like blood.

I sing a song of my native village,
Bones lying in terra-cotta coffins