Keki Daruwalla.  Migrations.

Keki Daruwalla. Migrations.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 27, 2025 Duration: 2:20

 
Migrations are always difficult: 
ask any drought, 
any plague; 
ask the year 1947. 
Ask the chronicles themselves: 
if there had been no migrations 
would there have been enough
history to munch on?

Going back in time is also tough.
Ask anyone back-trekking to Sargodha
or Jhelum or Mianwali and they'll tell you.
New faces among old brick;
politeness, sentiment,
dripping from the lips of strangers.
This is still your house, Sir.

And if you meditate on time
that is no longer time -
(the past is frozen, it is stone,
that which doesn't move
and pulsate is not time) -
if you meditate on that scrap of time,
the mood turns pensive
like the monsoons
gathering in the skies
but not breaking.

Mother used to ask, don't you remember my mother?
You'd be in the kitchen all the time
and run with the fries she ladled out,
still sizzling on the plate.
Don't you remember her at all?
Mother's fallen face
would fall further
at my impassivity.
Now my dreams ask me
If I remember my mother
And I am not sure how I'll handle that.
Migrating across years is also difficult.


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: 
© 2002, Keki Daruwalla

From: The Map-maker

Publisher: Ravi Dayal Publisher, Delhi


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…