Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

Salt 

of the earth, 

all subtlety dies 

with a pinch too much. 

You taste freedom, 

the knife-edge on your teeth. 

Faceless men eat saltless food  

in a north-western frontier town.  

You cannot eat the salt of a man  

you might one day need  

to kill. 

A blood-feud bursts, 

froth at the corner of your mouth. 

It kills you one grain at a time. 

You crave it cold, 

crusted on a glass,  

a leech of lemon on your lip. 

In hard times a bite of chilli and salt.  

In good times a bite of chilli. And salt. 

Then one day,  

tired of domesticity,  

you turn into a pillar. 

No looking back now. 

Your saline gaze fills oceans. 

You melt into tears  

warm and salt on my tongue.