School Bag

With a bag, full of dreams,
Called 'school-bag'
On his back, he walks barefoot
On the road to a primary school

Some dreams of a little man, his father
Some dreams of his Mother, now a widow
the bag carries, it wraps, it covers

The dreams fly away one after another
from the pages of small books
from the lead of his pencil
As he opens the school bag
to carry the picked grains of pea
while coming back from school

He, with a proud smile, pours
that handful of peas on his mother lap.

To him, slowly
the emptiness of Chengfu open the doors
to the noise of the city market
to the vastness of unploughed fields

Now his little pen needs no ink
it needs a bucketful of sweat in the sun
his pencil sharpener turns into a spade
His small books become the fields
where he does his homework

He still wears the same trouser,
stitched out from his father's,
it doesn't fit him any more
Nights become short
for all his tired and aching muscles

And the school-bag turns
Into the rich men's sacks
that he carries on his back
to deliver from one house to another
from one shops to another