Poem of the Week

The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife

By Michael Ondaatje

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
neighbor to your 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 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 grasscutter’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 an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.

***

I've posted a lot of fairly erotic poetry. I guess poets are really good about writing sex - which seems completely counter to my experience. Every time I told a girl I wrote poetry, they kinda zoned out.

What makes "The Cinnamon Peeler" so effective for me is the constant reference to the smell of cinnamon, the way it marks, not just the woman in the poem, but the speaker. He is a tradesman, a worker in cinnamon, and his trade follows him everywhere, marks everything he touches. At last, when he marries his love, he finds the smell transfers to her, and she's glad to have it.

This may be the only successful usage of the phrase "Smell me" in a sexy context.