Before we go again, Before the day breaks, An hour lights my eyes, Begins as thick fog   All over slowly lifting. A school on a ridge Is first to awaken As yet without children.   We have come as second learners. The breeze sends an easy chill To my blood. Below us A ricefield expertly engineered   Shapes like a bay Opening to the lure of clouds And designs of early mountains. The mists strip further,   And the vision is of peasant Skill in kaingin clearings And abungs claiming proud Paddies, communal waterways   And generous tiered forests. Step by terrace our tasks Unfold. The silent movement Of guerrillas levels   Like a rare plateau of time, A rugged valley at another. We see hamlets encircling But incompletely strung together.   Now the old trails have new meanings. We must open frontiers And construct aqueducts From distant springs to village jars;   From the toiling masses To the Party and the People's Army: Key links crossing the uneven Terrain of spiralling dialectics.   This vast space now shines Facet by facet as time bends And signals the stir of dogs And roosters. There is smoke   Rising from a crowd of betel Nut trees. We are only on a hill After all, and precisely Do taller realities stand   Around us, some unpeaked. The morning is a protracted struggle. The people are here. We are here. And already to this mountain   We add the weight of the working class. How can we not win? In a matter of minutes The half moon surrenders to the sun!