It’s not about taste. By the time you taste, it could be too late.
First you learn to pick out the smell beneath the smell of capers, ginger or sage.
Then dip into the sauces thickened with ghee,
stir through glutinous juices for signs of tincture.
Crush a mustard seed with the back of a spoon,
grind cardomom or sesame in a wooden mortar.
They say “It’s something more than eye and tongue;
its an instinct passed on from father to son.”

Tonight my nerve fails me.
Below the hall is set, its walls draped in silk.
Tables spread with silver burn gold in candlelight.
I count the plates and cups in twos then fives
to calm my mind, but nothing works.
Now they are seated, all talk and expectation,
the Royal party at the head, Phrygians to the right
and in a blast of pipes, the delegation from Sparta.

Last night I dreamt of my father eating okra,
garnished with henbane chopped into coriander.
A dish fell from a shelf and shattered on the floor.
On the way my horse startled, reared up at the gate
then a bird flew low, frenzied, clipping branches.
The city locks up doors and shutters and loved ones
but the half moon is bent over and shrouded,

poisoned by gentian, wormwood, vervain.