The Best of Ruskin Bond Part 29

The smell of secondhand goods

Is everywhere. Lost causes,

Lonely lives, and deaths in small cottages

Among the pines, meet here in the mildewed dark

Of his shop-Abdul Salaam, Proprietor.

Tales of a hundred failures

And ten hundred broken dreams.

A hat-pin and an Iron Cross

Lie down with a blackened pistol,

While a bronze Buddha smiles across

At a plastic doll from Bristol.

Old clothes, old books (perhaps a first edition?),

A dressing-gown, a dagger marked with rust.

A card for some lost Christmas,

And inside, a letter:

'Dear Jane, I am getting better.'

A Chinese vase and a china-dog.

The shop is cold and thick with dust,

The Mall is far from Grand;

But Abdul Salaam grows prosperous,

In a suit that's secondhand.

A Frog Screams

Standing near a mountain stream

I heard a sound like the creaking

Of a branch in the wind.

It was a frog screaming

In the jaws of a long green snake.

I couldn't bear that hideous cry.

And taking two sharp sticks,

I made the twisting snake disgorge the frog,

Who hopped quite spry out of the snake's mouth

And sailed away on a floating log.

Pleased with the outcome,