Niyi Osundare.  In The Moon For Love.

Niyi Osundare. In The Moon For Love.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 27, 2025 Duration: 2:25

  
The moon is playing hide-and-seek 
Behind the clouds. A mellow smile 
Lingers on the lips of the sky 
 
Tides tease and tangle 
At the water's edge. The buck eyes 
The doe with a deep, alluring passion 
 
Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

I can hear pigeons cooing
In their coop. I can hear alapandede
Swapping notes in the shady eaves

Oge taunts the wind with its restless tail
In the narrow lane between the walls
The baobab's bulbous boon is swinging in the wind

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

Touch my tale
Smell my song
Behold the dotted lines

On the pages of my skin
Unfurl my flower
Unravel my rave

Sun mo bi, Ologuro
I am in the mood for love tonight

Stir little fires in the furrow between my ridges
Plant me, a song, in your loamy acres
Palm my memory, mold my mask

Let rasping leaves caress the fruit
At the branch's edge. Quench this quest
With the magic of murmuring moments

Sun mo bi, Ologuro


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: 
 Niyi Osundare’s Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Collected Poems, was published by Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ) in 2002.

 

Osundare is one of the more prominent contributors to the Nigerian section of The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, 4th edition 1998, ed. Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier . Other key Nigerian representatives include Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, Gabriel Okara, John Pepper Clark, and Odia Ofeimun.


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
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