The grass had grown all over the garden. Here and there reeds raised their slender stalks.

　　At the window from which she used to contemplate the room there was no one. The outer walls, beaten by the rain, had lost their paint.

　　Neither behind nor before was there trace of a living soul.

　　Yet a flowering peach branch, sole witness of the past, still smiled at the eastern breeze.

　　In the empty buildings the swallows fluttered.

　　The grass had grown up everywhere, the footprints were covered with moss.

　　The corners of the walls were overgrown with brambles and thorns.

　　This was the road which he traversed in days gone by.

　　—Kim-Van-Kieu