The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle

 
Over the drowsy earth still night prevails; 
Calm sleep the mountain tops and shady vales, 
The rugged cliffs and hollow glens; 
The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea, 
The countless finny race and monster brood 
Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee 
Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood 
No more with noisy hum of insect rings;
And all the feathered tribes, by gentle sleep subdued,
Roost in the glade, and hang their drooping wings.

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 Theoi Project © Copyright 2000 - 2017 Aaron J. Atsma, New Zealand.

 
I have lit my treasured candles, 
one by one, to hallow this night. 
With you, who do not come, 
I wait the birth of the year. 
Dear God! 
the flame has drowned in crystal, 
and the wine, like poison, burns 
Old malice bites the air, 
old ravings rave again,
though the hour has not yet struck.

Dread. Bottomless dread…
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.

Let the gossip roll!
What to me are Hamlet’s garters,
or the whirlwind of Salome’s dance,
or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask?
I am more iron than they.

Prince Charming, prince of the mockers —
compared with him the foulest of sinners
is grace incarnate…

That woman I once was,
in a black agate necklace,
I do not wish to meet again
till the Day of Judgement.

Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven’t forgotten me.
As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future —
a terrible festival of dead leaves.

All the mirrors on the wall
show a man not yet appeared
who could not enter this white hall.
He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe’s curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.
Strayed from the future, can it be
that he will really come to me,
turning left from the bridge?

From childhood I have been afraid
of mummers. It always seemed
an extra shadow
without face or name
had slipped among them…

You…
you are as old as the Mamre oak,
ancient interrogator of the moon,
whose feigned groans cannot take us in.
You write laws of iron.

Creature of special tastes,
you do not wait for gout and fame
to elevate you
to a luxurious jubilee chair,
but bear your triumph
over the flowering heather,
over wildernesses.
And you are guilty of nothing: neither of this,
that, nor anything..

Besides
what have poets, in any case, to do with sin?
They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant
or die! But what am I trying to say?

In the black sky no star is seen,
somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death,
but the spiced tongues of the masqueraders
are loose and shameless
A shout:
“Make way for the hero!”
Ah yes. Displacing the tall one,
he will step forth now without fail
and sing to us about holy vengeance…

There is no death, each of us knows —
it’s banal to say.
I’ll leave it to others to explain.

Is this the visitor from the wrong side
of the mirror? Or the shape
that suddenly flitted past my window?
Is it the new moon playing tricks,
or is someone really standing there again
between the stove and the cupboard?

This means that gravestones are fragile
and granite is softer than wax.
Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity
I shall soon turn gray
or change into another person.
why do you beckon me with your hand?
For one moment of peace
I would give the peace of the tomb.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Poem without a Hero first published in England 1976 by Elek Books Limited, London. Translation copyright © D. M. Thomas, 1976

 
All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors 
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors, 
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground 
And from the first grey wakening we have found 
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain 
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap 
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap, 
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, 
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream 
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home;
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
-Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Copyright Credit: Alun Lewis.  First Published in Horizon, 1941. Selected Poems of Alun Lewis, ed. Jeremy Hooker & Gweno Lewis. Unwin Paperbacks 1981

 
Sometimes when my eyes are red 
I go up on top of the RCA Building 
          and gaze at my world, Manhattan— 
                     my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in, 
                           lofts, beds, coldwater flats 
—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind, 
          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men 
               walking the size of specks of wool—
   Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,
          sun go down over New Jersey where I was born
             & Paterson where I played with ants—
   my later loves on 15th Street,
          my greater loves of Lower East Side,
             my once fabulous amours in the Bronx   
                                        faraway—
   paths crossing in these hidden streets,
      my history summed up, my absences   
             and ecstasies in Harlem—
      —sun shining down on all I own
       in one eyeblink to the horizon
               in my last eternity—
                                     matter is water.

Sad,
      I take the elevator and go
             down, pondering,
and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s
                                           plateglass, faces,
             questioning after who loves,
      and stop, bemused
             in front of an automobile shopwindow
      standing lost in calm thought,
             traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me   
                      waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to
                      the romantic war news on the radio   
                                     ... all movement stops
& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,   
      tenderness flowing thru the buildings,
             my fingertips touching reality’s face,
      my own face streaked with tears in the mirror   
             of some window—at dusk—
                                     where I have no desire—
      for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese   
                      lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,
          Man struggling up the street
                     with packages, newspapers,
                                           ties, beautiful suits   
                     toward his desire
          Man, woman, streaming over the pavements   
                     red lights clocking hurried watches &   
                            movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading
          so crosswise, honking, lengthily,
                            by avenues
          stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums
                            thru such halting traffic
                                           screaming cars and engines   
so painfully to this
          countryside, this graveyard
                     this stillness
                                           on deathbed or mountain   
          once seen
                            never regained or desired
                                           in the mind to come
where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Copyright Credit: Allen Ginsberg, “My Sad Self” from Collected Poems, 1947-1980. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg.

In the bath-house, the mysteries hidden by trousers
Are revealed to you.
All becomes radiantly manifest.
Feast your eyes without restraint!
You see handsome buttocks, shapely trim torsos,
You hear the guys whispering pious formulas
to one another
('God is Great! ' 'Praise be to God! ')
Ah, what a palace of pleasure is the bath-house!
Even when the towel-bearers come in
And spoil the fun a bit.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Poems by Abu Nuwas, Translated by Jaafar Abu Tarab, iUniverse inc. 2005

Let us live, my Lesbia, and love,
and the rumors of rather stern old men
let us value all at just one penny!
Suns may set and rise again;
for us, when once the brief light has set,
an eternal night must be slept.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand, then a hundred;
then, when we have performed many thousands,
we shall shake them into confusion,
in order that we might not know,
and in order not to let any evil person envy us,
when he knows that there are so many of our kisses.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2001

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
       But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
       Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

ENJOY MORE
The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
"To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell is in the public domain . The poem was first published after Marvell's death in 1678, in a collection compiled by his housekeeper, Mary Palmer.

in the night when everything was black
burnt to a cross of ash
on the blind glass
and the dog’s bark a dark kite
blowing away in darkness
      to where the moon
tears like the keel of a sinking boat
I dreamt my language

the title page smeared black
with signs now undecipherable raw
        and inside the book
I saw my reflection
standing there three times

first among dead friends
with mottled grieving faces
like dogs staring directly into the blind window
while their thoughts like empty glasses
turning in the hands
          and I was there
thin neck and moustache
our poems are slaves each with a full wave
feathers proudly on the head

then in a tableau at departure
in the garden of the night
with cape of white hair
my mother an aged virgin in my embrace
            and further back
in the folds of memory
all other trusteds as torches of forgetting

were I now the prophet
sent to spy if there is life
           in this world
or the senseless exile returning to say
our language was a footnote
under the illegible page history?

a last time on a bench in the empty garden
of a madhouse of toothless ageds
as skeletons with little bitter flesh
swaddled in the blanket
and wild tuft and eyes blind marbles

bow and mutter bow and mutter
many words oh many words
but only the whispering of dead slaves
but not enough to groove or make boat
and outside of the book beyond all listening
the bark and the wind and the ash
of the moon in dark water

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 Copyright © 2009 Breyten Breytenbach

The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025.