Love Among the Spices: The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje + Egon Schiele CINNAMON Draw

This poem was written by Michael Ondaatje (the author of The English Patient) and is perhaps one of the most beautiful odes to love using our fifth sense as its lingua franca. A tale of love, longing and fulfillment by the hypothetical Cinnamon peeler. The use of cinnamon in this poem is Sri Lankan in origin, where Ondjaate was born.

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 the 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 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.

— Michael Ondaatje

Private Collection: Un Crime Exotique

Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief

I dedicate this poem to my huband to be Didier Cholay, who lives in all worlds at once. Didier loves spices; in his fragrance, food, and in his women 🙂 .

What is your favorite love sonnet and spice fragrance. (The best three comments, (feel free to write an ode to love or any fragrance with a cinnamon note ie Amouage, Aqaba, by kilian, DSH) will receive a sample of the cinnamon/spices fragrance of their choice from www..luckyscent.com and or www.indiescent.com. Draw closes May 31, 2011

All artwork is by one of my favorite erotic artists, Egon Schiele. The paintings and sketches certainly “smells” right juxstaposed with the sensual and erotic poem.

“Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal”.
Egon Schiele

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12 comments

  • That is a beautiful poem! I find it very difficult to name a favorite love poem,  doing injustice to all the others, but Shakespeare's sonnet 18 has to be a favorite. However, a favorite poet is F. Rückert, and there is a wonderful poem, perfect for a perfume blog:-)
    Daß der Ostwind Düfte
    Hauchet in die Lüfte,
    Dadurch tut er kund,
    Daß du hier gewesen.

    Daß hier Tränen rinnen,
    Dadurch wirst du innen,
    Wär's dir sonst nicht kund,
    Daß ich hier gewesen.

    Schönheit oder Liebe,
    Ob versteckt sie bliebe,
    Düfte tun es und Tränen kund,
    Daß sie hier gewesen.

    And in translation:

    By breathing fragrance
    Into the air,
    The East Wind makes known
    That you were here.

    Because tears fall here
    You will know,
    Though you were not told,
    That I was here.

    Beauty or love,
    Can they remain concealed?
    Fragrance and tears
    Will make known
    That she was here.

    I'm a lover of spice fragrances; but for cinnamon, I think my favorite perfume is Rousse.


  • cassandra franklin says:

    With a touch, a glance  
    I became yours  
    We laughed,we danced and we made magical love  
    We were happy  
    Then we cried  
    Tears running down  
    Engulfing our love in a river of sadness  
    Bête noire    
    Slowly with a touch,a glance  
    Amour returned  
    The broken butterfly wings strong again  
    For I am this mans wife
    Terrible poem but I knocked it off in five minutes LOL…When I was 30something I found an exercise book of poems I had written at 16..talk about cringeworthy….
     I loved the Cinnamon peelers wife…tense and taut with emotion..  

  • Aaron Potterman says:

    I do love cinnamon in a fragrance.  However, my favourite of all (that I have tried thus far) is the simple, yet charming, Diesel Zero Plus. 
    A simple love poem to go with it:
    All the love that history knows,
    is said to be in every rose.
    Yet all that could be found in two,
    is less than what I feel for you.

    – Author Unknown –

  • For cinnamon please make sur you click on indie and luckyscent to be eligie for the draw but comments when it’s not there are still greatly appreciated

  • My favorite fragrance to reach for with a cinnamon note  would be Serge Lutens Rousse.I like Asali's poem, even though the translation is not exact as i am german it still tells the meaning of the poem. Very nice.
    Until we find the real reason,
    The truth will have to do,
    We can only know so much,
    So there is always something new.
    Same goes for fragrances………there will always be something NEW.

  • I adore Schiele – in fact my son's middle name is Egon
    My favorite spice scent is Opium
    And here is the last line of my favorite love poem, from fellow Ohioan, Kenneth Patchen:
    23rd Street Runs into Heaven:
    "…Our supper is plain, but we are very wonderful."

  • I think my most favorite spice fragrance would have to be Opium (the original). I haven’t worn it since the early 90’s, and need to find some again. It’s still a favorite perfume of mine.
    I don’t have any poems to share but I will comment about cinnamon. To me, the smell of cinnamon smells like home, I just love it. My mom and grandma baked apple pies very often (of course with cinnamon and nutmeg). So I too, now love to make apple pies from scratch with plenty of cinnamon and nutmeg. I also adore the smell of lovely little gift shops that we have around here. Their shelves are filled with so many special things to adorn the home (it’s like eye candy). Among the little pretties are always scented candles; votives and tapers, and potpouri too. As soon as you open the door to walk inside, the permeated cinnamony air welcomes you in.
    Cinnamon also happens to be the first spice that I used to flavor my homemade baby food for my children. It was their first introduction to spices. I added it to homemade apple sauce, their sweet potatoes, their oatmeal…

    Well, now. w/ all this talke of cinnamon,  I think I’m quite in the mood to bake something cinnamony now – with a steamy cup of hot coffee on the side! 😀

  • kastehelmi says:

    Love poetry–the best kind of poetry!! I love many love poems, but here is one I adore by Pablo Neruda:
    Every Day You Play
    Every day you play with the light of the universe.
    Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
    You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
    as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.
    You are like nobody since I love you.
    Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
    Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
    Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
    Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
    The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
    Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
    The rain takes off her clothes.
    The birds go by, fleeing.
    The wind. The wind.
    I can contend only against the power of men.
    The storm whirls dark leaves
    and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
    You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
    You will answer me to the last cry.
    Cling to me as though you were frightened.
    Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.
    Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
    and even your breasts smell of it.
    While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
    I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
    How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
    my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
    So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
    and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.
    My words rained over you, stroking you.
    A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
    I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
    I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
    dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
    I want
    to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
    I honestly have yet to find a favorite cinnamon fragrance, I'm still trying them. I heartily enjoy the note in Lyric Woman by Amouage and Musc Ravageur de Malle but I want to discover a cinnamon beauty that's all about the spices!

  • I remember turning on the radio some years ago and hearing a reading of the poem "Warming her Pearls" by Carol Ann Duffy. It sent shivers down my spine. It is a beautiful, yearning poem of a love that can never be realised of a maid for her mistress. The imagery of the pearls being warmed on the maid's skin for her mistress to wear is exquisite and tender.
    For spice fragrances I very much like Cimabue from Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. 

  • Alexander Rachev says:

    Spices are common ingredient in many of my favourtie scents and would be difficult to pick one.Recently I'm very excited about Xerjoff XJ Homme,which has some spices and which remines me of Cuir Mauresque which is very spicy.
    It will be difficult to trasnlate a poem,but I will try.It is from one of the greatest bulgarian poets Peyo Yavorov
    TWO BEAUTIFUL EYES
     
     Two beautiful eyes. The soul of a child
    In two beautiful eyes; – music – rays.
    They do not want and do not promise either…
    My soul is praying,
    Child,
    My soul is praying!
    Passions and miseries
    Will throw tomorrow onto them
    The veil of shame and sin.
    The veil of shame and sin
    Will never be thrown onto them
    By passions and miseries.
    My soul is praying,
    Child,
    My soul is praying…
    They do not want and do not promise either! –
    Two beautiful eyes. Music, rays
    In two beautiful eyes. The soul of a child.
    Peyo Yavorov