Kim Sowol.  The Road.

Kim Sowol. The Road.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 28, 2025 Duration: 1:36

  
Again last night  
at a country inn  
crows cried at dawn.  
  
Today 
how many miles 
again lead where? 
 
Away to the mountains, 
to the plains? 
With no place that calls me 
I go nowhere. 
 
Don’t talk of my home, 
Chongju, Kwaksan, 
while the train and the boat go there. 
 
Hear me, wild geese in the sky: 
is there a road in the air 
that you travel so sure? 
 
Hear me, wild geese in the sky: 
I stand at the center of the crossroads. 
Again and again the paths branch, 
but no way is mine. 


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, with an introduction, by DAVID R. McCANN. Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia. Copyright Date: 2007.


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
John Clare.   I Am. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:01
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost; And yet I am! a…
Geoffrey Hill.  From Mercian Hymns. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:03
I King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and th…
Gabriel Okara.  The Paino And The Drums. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:17
When at break of day at a riverside I hear the jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, rawlike bleeding flesh, speaking of primal youth and the beginning I see the panther ready to pounce the leopard snarlin…
Ezra Pound.  The Garden. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:33
The Garden. By Ezra Pound. Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anemia. And round about there is a r…
Emily Dickinson.  Because I Could Not Stop For Death. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility…
Edward Thomas.  Adlestrop. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:41
Yes. I remember Adlestrop— The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platf…
Du Fu.  A Woman Of Quality. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:37
Matchless in breeding and beauty, a fine lady has taken refuge in this forsaken valley. She is of good family, she says, but her fortune has withered away; now she lives as the grass and trees. When the heartlands fell t…
Douglas Dunn.  Kaleidoscope. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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 lan…
Alcman.  Night Poem. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30
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 r…