Kotri By The River

At Kotri, by the river, when the evening’s sun is low,

The waving palm trees quiver, the golden waters glow,

The shining ripples shiver, descending to the sea;

At Kotri, by the river, she used to wait for me.

So young, she was, and slender, so pale with wistful eyes

As luminous and tender as Kotri’s twilight skies.

Her face broke into flowers, red flowers at the mouth,

Her voice,–she sang for hours like bulbuls in the south.

We sat beside the water through burning summer days,

And many things I taught her of Life and all its ways

Of Love, man’s loveliest duty, of Passion’s reckless pain,

Of Youth, whose transient beauty comes once, but not again.

She lay and laughed and listened beside the water’s edge.

The glancing rirer glistened and glinted through the sedge.

Green parrots flew above her and, as the daylight died,

Her young arms drew her lover more closely to her side.

Oh days so warm and golden! oh nights so cool and still!

When Love would not be holden, and Pleasure had his will.

Days, when in after leisure, content to rest we lay,

Nights, when her lips’ soft pressure drained all my life away.

And while we sat together, beneath the Babul trees,

The fragrant, sultry weather cooled by the river breeze,

If passion faltered ever, and left the senses free,

We heard the tireless river decending to the sea.

I know not where she wandered, or went in after days,

Or if her youth she squandered in Love’s more doubtful ways.

Perhaps, beside the river, she died, still young and fair;

Perchance the grasses quiver above her slumber there.

At Kotri, by the river, maybe I too shall sleep

The sleep that lasts for ever, too deep for dreams; too deep.

Maybe among the shingle and sand of floods to be

Her dust and mine may mingle and float away to sea.

Ah Kotri, by the river, when evening’s sun is low,

Your faint reflections quiver, your golden ripples glow.

You knew, oh Kotri river, that love which could not last.

For me your palms still shiver with passions of the past.

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Poems in English 

• Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Red Planet Haiku by Thomas J Camp by Poetry In English
• Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Ode On The Spring by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• My Country Place by Thomas J Camp by Poetry In English
• Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Monsters under the bed by Thomas J Camp by Poetry In English
• Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Lucky by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Thomas Gray – Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Hymn To Adversity by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Henry Clay’s Mouth by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• He Has Lived In Many Houses by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Gorgeous Surfaces by Thomas Lux by Poetry In English
• Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray by Poetry In English
• Drummer Boy by Thomas J Camp by Poetry In English
• Becalmed and Bewildered by Thomas J Camp by Poetry In English

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