Douglas Dunn.  Kaleidoscope.

Douglas Dunn. Kaleidoscope.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 27, 2025 Duration: 1:46

 Kaleidoscope.  By Douglas Dunn.  


To climb these stairs again, bearing a tray, 
Might be to find you pillowed with your books, 
Your inventories listing gowns and frocks 
As if preparing for a holiday. 
Or, turning from the landing, I might find 
My presence watched through your kaleidoscope, 
A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned
In lovely forms of foresight, prayer and hope.
I climb these stairs a dozen times a day
And, by the open door, wait, looking in
At where you died. My hands become a tray
Offering me, my flesh, my soul, my skin.
Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry
For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.


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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: 
From Elegies in 1985, Copyright Douglas Dunn


There’s a particular sound to the jungle-a layered quiet of leaves, birds, and distant water. It’s from within that atmosphere that The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle finds its voice. Produced by The Ceylon Press, each episode is recorded at the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, nestled in the wilds northwest of Kandy. This isn’t a standard literary analysis show; it’s an experience of resonance. Here, timeless poems by renowned authors are read aloud, allowing their rhythms and meanings to intertwine with the ambient sounds of a Sri Lankan forest. The setting does more than provide backdrop-it actively shapes how you hear each word, offering a fresh and quietly profound perspective on verses you thought you knew. This podcast invites a slower kind of listening, where a classic sonnet might be punctuated by a monsoon shower or the call of a hornbill. It’s for anyone who believes place matters, that the environment where a story is told becomes part of the story itself. Tune in for a unique fusion of the literary and the natural, a deliberate retreat into the world of spoken art framed by one of the planet’s most vibrant soundscapes.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 89

The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle
Podcast Episodes
R. S. Thomas.  On the Farm. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49
There was Dai Puw. He was no good. They put him in the fields to dock swedes, And took the knife from him, when he came home At late evening with a grin Like the slash of a knife on his face. There was Llew Puw, and he w…
Siegfried Sassoon.  Suicide In The Trenches. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:45
I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a…
Seamus Heaney.  Digging . [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:35
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowe…
Shel Silverstein.  Where the Sidewalk Ends. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:48
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the pepper…
Sappho. The Anactoria Poem. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:56
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, others call a fleet the most beautiful of sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what- ever you love best. And it's easy to make this understood by everyone, for…
Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Ozymandias. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:47
I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold co…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Kubla Khan. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:49
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdle…
Stephen Spender.  The Truly Great. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:22
I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, s…
Robert Frost.  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Betwee…
Richard Blanco.  For / After / Jan Beatty. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:09
After my third shot of tequila / chased by a lime sour as my rant: fuck this-fuck that-fuck them-fuck me-fuck it all / you slashed me / same as your poems’ slashes / slash me / when you asked me: so, why the fuck don’t y…