The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje, Narrated by Leo Aurini
A young lady requested that I record a reading of this poem.
Dec. 1, 2020 - Davis Aurini
01:31
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| 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 the 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 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. |
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