Pablo Neruda.  If You Forget Me.

Pablo Neruda. If You Forget Me.

Author: The Ceylon Press September 27, 2025 Duration: 1:39

 
I want you to know 
one thing. 
 
You know how this is: 
if I look 
at the crystal moon, at the red branch 
of the slow autumn at my window, 
if I touch 
near the fire 
the impalpable ash 
or the wrinkled body of the log, 
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.


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: 
Translation copyright © 1990, 2004 by. Dennis Maloney and Clark Zlotchew ... Copyright © 2005 by Pablo Neruda and Clayton Eshelman.


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
Xavier Villaurrutia.  Nocturne: The Angels. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:50
You might say the streets flow sweetly through the night. The lights are dim so the secret will be kept, the secret known by the men who come and go, for they’re all in on the secret and why break it up in a thousand pie…
Wallace Stevens.  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:17
I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. III was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small pa…
W.H. Davies.  Leisure. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:40
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass…
W. B. Yeats.  Sailing to Byzantium. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:56
I That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Wh…
Walter de la Mare.   The Listeners. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:48
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor:And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head:And…
W.H. Auden.  Lullaby. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:44
Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creatur…
Virgil.  An Excerpt From The First Georgic. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:07
When spring begins and the ice-locked streams begin To flow down from the snowy hills above And the clods begin to crumble in the breeze, The time has come for my groaning ox to drag My heavy plow across the fields, so t…
Theodore Roethke.  The Waking. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:05
The Waking. By Theodore Roethke. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from…
Stevie Smith.  Not Waving but Drowning. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his h…
Thomas Hardy.   The Darkling Thrush. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:23
I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Ha…