Grandma died.  My sadness lingers because I couldn't come back in time to say goodbye.
In you, my aunt, I feel Grandma still.
She is there in your facial features, and in your figure
silhouetted against the darkness and light of the paddy field where you sow new seeds.

Grandma gave birth many times, yet only two of her children lived: you and my father.
You let me continue living the life of Grandma.
You wake up each footprint splayed into the soil and each
slippery step on both the raised and eroded banks of the River Da,
where our many fates have been sowed in a field of destiny.

The seasons of hoarfrost have whitened your hair.
Clouds drift aimlessly across an emptying sky.
I remember the days your palm-leaf coat was shredded by the wind.
You were thin and with the twisted and hardship-laden bamboo basket on your head.
Your feeble shadow fell across the endless country road.
You still sing to me the lullabies you sang, heavy with salt and river silt,
as you carried me to school along the old roads of my childhood.

I see you on the dyke balancing the bamboo pole
bearing the late afternoons on your shoulders,
bearing the twilights that stream down your face
bearing the changing seasons and their turbulence.
I learn from you the lessons of sweat and of the time when the trees bear fruit.
I learn the fairytales that farmers pass on to their children and grandchildren
so that we may know how to harvest in the fields of benevolence and righteousness.

Grandma's stories are coming back to me.
Your late night coughing, my aunt, sends sharp pains through my chest.
I watch your bent back and miss Grandma.
Yet strangely, my mind is at peace whenever I return to our home village.
There, your shadow, or Grandma's settles deep into the life of our homeland!