The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 25

Though we must leave this place,

We've trapped forever

In the trembling air

The last sweet phantom kiss.

5.

I know you'll come when the cherries

Are ripe;

But it is still November

And I must wait

For the green fruit to blush

At your approach.

And meanwhile the tree is visited

By robber bands, masked mynas

And yellow birds with beaks like daggers,

Determined not to leave one cherry

Whole for lovers.

But still I wait, hoping one day

You'll come to stain your lips

With cherry-juice, and climb my tree;

Bright G.o.ddess in dark green temple,

Thrusting your tongue at me.

6.

Slender waisted, bright as a song,

Dark as the whistling-thrush at dawn,

Swift as the running days of November,

Lost like a dream too sweet to remember.

It Isn't Time That's Pa.s.sing

Remember the long ago when we lay together

In a pain of tenderness and counted

Our dreams: long summer afternoons

When the whistling-thrush released

A deep sweet secret on the trembling air;

Blackbird on the wing, bird of the forest shadows,

Black rose in the long ago summer,