I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job. I say my own name. I say goodbye. The words follow each other downwind. I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing? Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same. I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

This is the twentieth century, you are there, preparing to skin a human being alive. Your part will be to remain calm.

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.

A great poem by a master writer!