The Invention Of The Senses Poem by Ranjit Hoskote

Touch crosses the small distances of this room,
caressing a pebble, smoothing a ruffled curtain.
When you rest your hand on this ebony table,
a book floats to the surface, opens to page one.
Run your fingers along the paper, the edge, the spine,
and a lamp begins to glow faintly in a corner.

Touch unlocks the closed and private cells:
unlike the voice, its ends are not gregarious.
Searching alone, it brings home what you've lost:
open your hands in a shallow fan
of ten fingers, and a door clicks open,
a child looks through.

[for Masaki Fujihata]