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 the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: saltmaster: moneychanger: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the friend of Charlemagne.
‘I liked that,’ said Offa, ‘sing it again.’
IV
I was invested in mother-earth, the crypt of roots and endings. Child’s-play. I abode there, bided my time: where the mole
shouldered the clogged wheel, his gold solidus; where dry-dust badgers thronged the Roman flues, the long-unlooked-for mansions of our tribe.
V
So much for the elves’ wergild, the true governance of England, the gaunt warrior-gospel armoured in engraved stone. I wormed my way heavenward for ages amid barbaric ivy, scrollwork of fern.
Exile or pilgrim set me once more upon that ground: my rich and desolate childhood. Dreamy, smug-faced, sick on outings—I who was taken to be a king of some kind, a prodigy, a maimed one.
VI
The princes of Mercia were badger and raven. Thrall to their freedom, I dug and hoarded. Orchards fruited above clefts. I drank from honeycombs of chill sandstone.
‘A boy at odds in the house, lonely among brothers.’ But I, who had none, fostered a strangeness; gave myself to unattainable toys.
Candles of gnarled resin, apple-branches, the tacky mistletoe. ‘Look’ they said and again ‘look.’ But I ran slowly; the landscape flowed away, back to its source.
In the schoolyard, in the cloakrooms, the children boasted their scars of dried snot; wrists and knees garnished with impetigo.
X
He adored the desk, its brown-oak inlaid with ebony, assorted prize pens, the seals of gold and base metal into which he had sunk his name.
It was there that he drew upon grievances from the people; attended to signatures and retributions; forgave the death-howls of his rival. And there he exchanged gifts with the Muse of History.
What should a man make of remorse, that it might profit his soul? Tell me. Tell everything to Mother, darling, and God bless.
He swayed in sunlight, in mild dreams. He tested the little pears. He smeared catmint on his palm for his cat Smut to lick. He wept, attempting to master ancilla and servus.
XI
Coins handsome as Nero’s; of good substance and weight. Offa Rex resonant in silver, and the names of his moneyers. They struck with accountable tact. They could alter the king’s face.
Exactness of design was to deter imitation; mutilation if that failed. Exemplary metal, ripe for commerce. Value from a sparse people, scrapers of salt-pans and byres.
Swathed bodies in the long ditch; one eye upstaring. It is safe to presume, here, the king’s anger. He reigned forty years. Seasons touched and retouched the soil.
Heathland, new-made watermeadow. Charlock, marsh-marigold. Crepitant oak forest where the boar furrowed black mould, his snout intimate with worms and leaves.
XV
Tutting, he wrenched at a snarled root of dead crabapple. It rose against him. In brief cavort he was Cernunnos, the branched god, lightly concussed.
He divided his realm. It lay there like a dream. An ancient land, full of strategy. Ramparts of compost pioneered by red-helmeted worms. Hemlock in ambush, night-soil, tetanus. A wasps’ nest ensconced in the hedge-bank, a reliquary or wrapped head, the corpse of Cernunnos pitching dayward its feral horns.
XVI
Clash of salutation. As keels thrust into shingle. Ambassadors, pilgrims. What is carried over? The Frankish gift, two-edged, regaled with slaughter.
The sword is in the king’s hands; the crux a craftsman’s triumph. Metal effusing its own fragrance, a variety of balm. And other miracles, other exchanges.
Shafts from the winter sun homing upon earth’s rim. Christ’s mass: in the thick of a snowy forest the flickering evergreen fissured with light.
Attributes assumed, retribution entertained. What is borne amongst them? Too much or too little. Indulgences of bartered acclaim; an expenditure, a hissing. Wine, urine and ashes.
XXVII
‘Now when King Offa was alive and dead’, they were all there, the funereal gleemen: papal legate and rural dean; Merovingian car-dealers, Welsh mercenaries; a shuffle of house-carls.
He was defunct. They were perfunctory. The ceremony stood acclaimed. The mob received memorial vouchers and signs.
After that shadowy, thrashing midsummer hail-storm, Earth lay for a while, the ghost-bride of livid Thor, butcher of strawberries, and the shire-tree dripped red in the arena of its uprooting.
XXX
And it seemed, while we waited, he began to walk towards us he vanished
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
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.
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The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
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The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.
I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...
When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
you climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
Peeler's wife. Smell me.
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The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
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 that
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against it.
Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield what the farmer prays for; then will the barn
Be full to bursting with the gathered grain,
And yet if the field's unknown and new to us,
Before our plow breaks open the soil at all,
It's necessary to study the ways of the winds
And the changing ways of the skies, and also to know
The history of the planting in that ground,
What crops will prosper there and what will not.
In one place grain grows best, in another, vines;
Another's good for the cultivation of trees;
In still another the grain turns green unbidden.
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A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
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 rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
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The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 west of Kandy
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
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A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
To you I have given wings, on which you may fly aloft
Above the boundless sea and all the earth
With ease. At feasts and banquets you will be present
On all occasions, lying in the mouths of many,
And to the clear-toned sound of pipes young men
With seemly grace and loveliness, their voices fair and clear,
Will sing of you. And when beneath the hollows of the murky earth
You go to Hades' halls ringing with lamentation,
Not even then, though dead, will you ever lose your fame; instead, you will be known
To people of all time, your name imperishable,
Kyrnos, roaming through mainland Hellas and up and down the islands,
Passing over the restless fish-swarming sea,
Not mounted on the backs of horses, but sent abroad
By the radiant gifts of the Muses, violet-crowned:
To all who care for them, even to those who are not yet born, you will be
Alike a theme of song, so long as earth and sun exist.
From you, however, I get scant respect;
Instead, you cheat me with words as if I were a little child.
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A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
Lady Lazarus. By Sylvia Plath.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 west of Kandy
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 pieces
when it’s so sweet to hold it close,
and share it only with the one chosen person.
If, at a given moment, everyone would say
with one word what he is thinking,
the six letters of DESIRE would form an enormous luminous scar,
a constellation more ancient, more dazzling than any other.
And that constellation would be like a burning sex
in the deep body of night,
like the Gemini, for the first time in their lives,
looking each other in the eyes and embracing forever.
Suddenly the river of the street is filled with thirsty creatures;
they walk, they pause, they move on.
They exchange glances, they dare to smile,
they form unpredictable couples…
There are nooks and benches in the shadows,
riverbanks of dense indefinable shapes,
sudden empty spaces of blinding light
and doors that open at the slightest touch.
For a moment, the river of the street is deserted.
Then it seems to replenish itself,
eager to start again.
It is paralyzed, mute, gasping moment,
like a heart between two spasms.
But a new throbbing, a new pulsebeat
launches new thirsty creatures on the river of the street.
They cross, crisscross, fly up.
They glide along the ground.
They swim standing up, so miraculously
no one would ever say they’re not really walking.
They are angels.
They have come down to earth
on invisible ladders.
They come from the sea that is the mirror of the sky
on ships of smoke and shadow,
they come to fuse and be confused with men,
to surrender their foreheads to the thighs of women,
to let other hands anxiously touch their bodies
and let other bodies search for their bodies till they’re found,
like the closing lips of a single mouth,
they come to exhaust their mouths, so long inactive,
to set free their tongues of fire,
to sing the songs, to swear, to say all the bad words
in which men have concentrated the ancient mysteries
of flesh, blood and desire.
They have assumed names that are divinely simple.
They call themselves Dick or John, Marvin or Louis.
Only by their beauty are they distinguishable from men.
They walk, they pause, they move on.
They exchange glances, they dare to smile.
They form unpredictable couples.
They smile maliciously going up in the elevators of hotels,
where leisurely vertical flight is still practices.
There are celestial marks on their naked bodies:
blue signs, blue stars and letters.
They let themselves fall into beds, they sink into pillows
that make them think they’re still in the clouds.
But they close their eyes to surrender to the pleasures of their mysterious incarnation,
and when they sleep, they dream not of angels but of men.
ENJOY MORE
A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
I woke in the night
and thought, It was a dream,
nothing has torn the future apart,
we have not lived years
in dread, it never happened,
I dreamed it all. And then
there was this sensation of terrific pressure
lifting, as if I were rising
in one of those old diving bells,
lightening, unburdening. I didn’t know
how heavy my life had become—so much fear,
so little knowledge. It was like
being young again, but I understood
how light I was, how without encumbrance,—
and so I felt both young and awake,
which I never felt
when I was young. The curtains moved
—it was still summer, all the windows open—
and I thought, I can move that easily.
I thought my dream had lasted for years,
a decade, a dream can seem like that,
I thought, There’s so much more time ...
And then of course the truth
came floating back to me.
You know how children
love to end stories they tell
by saying, It was all a dream? Years ago,
when I taught kids to write,
I used to tell them this ending spoiled things,
explaining and dismissing
what had come before. Now I know
how wise they were, to prefer
that gesture of closure,
their stories rounded not with a sleep
but a waking. What other gift
comes close to a reprieve?
This was the dream that Wally told me:
I was in the tunnel, he said,
and there really was a light at the end,
and a great being standing in the light.
His arms were full of people, men and women,
but his proportions were all just right—I mean
he was the size of you or me.
And the people said, Come with us,
we’re going dancing. And they seemed so glad
to be going, and so glad to have me
join them, but I said,
I’m not ready yet. I didn’t know what to do,
when he finished,
except hold the relentless
weight of him, I didn’t know
what to say except, It was a dream,
nothing’s wrong now,
it was only a dream.
ENJOY MORE
A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.
Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on.
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A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
Ithaka.by C.P Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
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 you
ever say it in your poems / I took another shot but couldn’t
shoot out a reason / until now, Jan / you’re right, so / fuck \
that my poems never shut out strangers’ glassy-eyed
guh’mornins / fuck their mumbles wishing me
a wonderful day / on not-so-wonder-filled days / fuck
my naïve belief that their mouths and mine
have a heart / fuck my similes that choose to bite
into pleasantries like / buttered bread
for me to taste all day / a lifetime, Jan / fuck \
that I can’t hate kids / that my poems love
the screeches of their awe-filled eyes / that I want
to see whatever it is they see / butterfly spots
as tigers’ eyes winking / moss-skinned stones
as emeralds / snowflakes falling as frozen
stars / palm trees as flagpoles fluttering peace, Jan / fuck \
that my lines don’t lose their patience with
old folks at check-out lines / double-checking the price
of every fucking item / that my poems don’t have eyes
to roll at their yesteryear chatter / Can you believe the cost
of living today? / fuck that I listen to them / see
their wrinkled eyes as maps / roads
I trace toward my own dead end, Jan / fuck \
my mother who’s eighty-six / fuck that I can’t curse
at her / for never reading the poems
I’ve written, aching / for her to sweep away
the ashes / of the Cuban homeland she chose
to lose / fuck that I can’t stop rendering her
as a martyr / who died so I could write
this fucking poem in this country, Jan / fuck \
my father too / who waited until the hour
of his deathbed to whisper: te amo / fuck my poems
that always forgive him / but never myself for
not / whispering back: te amo, papá / fuck that I will never
tire of gathering our silences / into rivers of words
that flow nowhere / spill into nothing, Jan / fuck \
the nightmare that was my grandfather’s dream
of me becoming some baseball superstar I was never
going to be / fuck that my poems only acknowledge
his love’s persistence / the popsicles he’d treat me to
after every game / no matter how many times
I struck-out at bat / at life, Jan / fuck \
the fuck’n faggot my grandmother slurred at me
every day fuck’n faggot / fuck that my poems erase her
words to write her into my best friend
for teaching me how to survive cruelty such as
hers, in such a brutal world, Jan / fuck \
ENJOY MORE
A small island encircled by formidable oceans, Sri Lanka is a mystery to many: remote, hard to place; a well-kept secret. The Ceylon Press seeks to make its complicated story more accessible. The 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; as well as Poetry from The Jungles’ two podcasts, 101 Poets; and 100 Poet, 100 Poems. 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 west of Kandy .
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Dec2024 cover RGB
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
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
in the night when everything was black
burnt to a cross of ash
on the blind glass
and the dog’s bark a dark kite
blowing away in darkness
to where the moon
tears like the keel of a sinking boat
I dreamt my language
the title page smeared black
with signs now undecipherable raw
and inside the book
I saw my reflection
standing there three times
first among dead friends
with mottled grieving faces
like dogs staring directly into the blind window
while their thoughts like empty glasses
turning in the hands
and I was there
thin neck and moustache
our poems are slaves each with a full wave
feathers proudly on the head
then in a tableau at departure
in the garden of the night
with cape of white hair
my mother an aged virgin in my embrace
and further back
in the folds of memory
all other trusteds as torches of forgetting
were I now the prophet
sent to spy if there is life
in this world
or the senseless exile returning to say
our language was a footnote
under the illegible page history?
a last time on a bench in the empty garden
of a madhouse of toothless ageds
as skeletons with little bitter flesh
swaddled in the blanket
and wild tuft and eyes blind marbles
bow and mutter bow and mutter
many words oh many words
but only the whispering of dead slaves
but not enough to groove or make boat
and outside of the book beyond all listening
the bark and the wind and the ash
of the moon in dark water
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
‘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 he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
In the bath-house, the mysteries hidden by trousers
Are revealed to you.
All becomes radiantly manifest.
Feast your eyes without restraint!
You see handsome buttocks, shapely trim torsos,
You hear the guys whispering pious formulas
to one another
('God is Great! ' 'Praise be to God! ')
Ah, what a palace of pleasure is the bath-house!
Even when the towel-bearers come in
And spoil the fun a bit.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
Troy has perished, the great city.
Only the red flame now lives there.
The dust is rising, spreading out like a great wing of smoke and all is hidden.
We now are gone, one here, one there.
And Troy is gone forever.
Farewell, dear city.
Farewell, my country, where my children lived.
There below, the Greek ships wait.
ENJOY MORE
The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 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; Archaeologies, the blank verse diaries of an occasional hermit; 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 north west of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.
