Free The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje Page A

allows a freedom of habit, is a house.
    Everything here is alien to me but you. And your room like a grey well, your coat hangers above the laundry machine where you hang the semi-damp clothes so you do not have to iron them, the green grey walls of wood, the secret drawer which you opened after you knew me two years to show me the ancient Japanese pens. All this I love. Though I carry my own landscape in me and my three bags. But this has become your skin, and as you leave you recognize this.
    On certain evenings, when I have not bothered to put on lights, I hit my knees on low bookcases where they should not be. But you shift your hip easily, habitually, around them as you pass by carrying laundry or books. When you can move through a house blindfolded it belongs to you. You are moving like blood calmly within your own body. It is only recently that I am able to wake beside you and without looking, almost in a dream, put out my hand and know exactly where your shoulder or your heart will be – you in your specific posture in this bed of yours that we share. And at times this has seemed to be knowledge. As if you were a blueprint of your house.
THE CINNAMON PEELER
    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 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. Smell me.
WOMEN LIKE YOU
    the communal poem – Sigiri Graffiti, 5th century
    They do not stir
    these ladies of the mountain
    do not give us
    the twitch of eyelids
                             The king is dead
    They answer no one
    take the hard
    rock as lover.
    Women like you
    make men pour out their hearts
                             ‘Seeing you I want
                             no other life’
                             ‘The golden skins have
                             caught my mind’
    who came here
    out of the bleached land
    climbed this fortress
    to adore the rock
    and with the solitude of the air
    behind them
                   carved an alphabet
    whose motive was perfect desire
    wanting these portraits of women
    to speak
    and caress
    Hundreds of small verses
    by different hands
    became one
    habit of the unrequited
    Seeing you
    I want no other life
    and turn around
    to the sky
    and everywhere below
    jungle, waves of heat
    secular love
    Holding the new flowers
    a circle of
    first finger and thumb
    which is a window
    to your breast
    pleasure