WE STOOD, before the movie started, in the dark cinema, the whole crowd standing, mouthing to themselves an anthem, our hands quietly, one cupped in the other, in front where our laps will be when we sit down. On the screen the flag waved, in the wind from a computer, and the wheel on the flag spun. I think my uncle and my aunt besides were singing aloud. What a fine singing and from the speakers, too. We keep seeing these movies, with no idea what is supposed happen.

THIS is the body, our old body, and we have shed it. After which we arrived in Michigan. We have left the pressing bodies for the bodies of trees. Where we had a scarf of smoke over our eyes, even in the mountains, smoke and dust — the burning of leaves, of bodies, of tiny plastic wrappers spilling green fire, red dust stirred by buses up off the plains — now we have traded it for scarves of distance, miles around blue, you can see forever, nobody.

IN ABSENTIA : Why so much missing? I’ll say it is because we were living with the hot. Perspiration shot from our temples, behind the ears, flooded out the inside of the elbows and any attempt to record taken with the flood. We found new places to sweat. We shot perspiration at each other, at our friends, then tired of the sport. I had a handkerchief for my brow, but across my neck, it turned to pulp on the second day.

My eye has become soft. And the world. Send ice.

*

Where does the hot come from? So it says.

When the heaven-dwellers, the sages, the gods performed the horse sacrifice, Shiva got no share. Why should he not? His wife demanded. Perspiration came he was so angry. He dispersed the gods, threw blood in the altar fire. The sacrifice took the form of a deer and fled. Shiva flew after. The perspiration grew a heavy droplet at the tip of his nose. Where it hit the earth, a little red man, hairy like an owl or a hawk, stormed the earth : Fever. Granted, his anger was justified, but could he not at least dilute this terrible Fever, Indra suggested. Who could withstand such energy?

And so we find the traces of Fever — sullen laterite soils, pens gone dry or missing, all maladies concerning sheeps’ livers, headaches of elephants, constipation of horses, fatigue among tigers, hiccuping among parrots, crossword puzzles left incomplete, lassitude in travelers, deafness between lovers, a certainty that the rains are laughing at you.

OUT OF the idea of constriction, three suggestive requests in order of urgency set to quiet (can you feel the rhythm burnin’, burnin’) rock in a tight blue interior, hemmed in by mist, and perched over us, Jesus in a peely pink frame, a few dried grasses in offering.

WE ARE BAFFLED.

FOR instance, beside the dozen fish each night under the candle the ladies sell on our street. Or, next to the fish, the anvil of pork under a screen. Or, the little stand selling cookies and mobile phone accessories. Between every seller is a half-booth, sometimes two half-booths. In every half-booth you might place a bet. They will not tell you what you bet on. You bet on bows and arrows, a dozen bows, a thousand arrows. These men will everyday, for your benefit, sometimes without looking, shoot the sunset air. These men do not make a sound.

HERE, the swami’s sweetest cow, whom, tomorrow morning, we will have fed little bananas, yesterday’s prasad, blessed offerings, sadly blackening, and will I have been supposed to remove the peels? We will remove them. The slime neatly spread, a tongue thick as a wrist.

THE CHILDREN’S children. We had a week in the city with which to consider the arts along side the children from the neighborhood. We made both bugs and people, jumped up and down on the carpet. We did not use our inside-voices. Then we wondered aloud where do children come from.

WHAT makes things circle? According to our study, two things : a) At the center of the wheel, there should be a mover. b) At the center of the flag, a wind horse.

ONE HUNDRED years we’d been skating ! Or, had been waiting to skate. They told us April one The Rink would open, and at the bottom of the hill we huddled until then. They did not lie.

April three : Freeskate (18:00 – 20:00). We rushed after school, after cheese and sharab and mustard. We had not brought our keys and one wheel, rattling, threatened to defect, but still we pushed around and around and around, until the space between slats in the floor drew ovals we were going to so fast. They told us the floor was one hundred years old. We imagined parasols and gowns, a great band on the stage, faces from the balcony seats, seersucker and taffeta. Circles, circling. We did not see a band, listened only to the floor, a wooden hoola hoop, with marbles inside. One gentleman may have been there then and then on through the parade of subsequent fashions, the way he swiveled his hips, tossing his white hair, a reverie, perfectly, moving backwards.

FOR YOU, two.

ACHCHHI KHAD. In Hindi, we have learned about the future, and with it comes responsibility.

“You have gained more freedom in conversation in two ways — freedom to speak of the future and freedom to speak of farm life.”

I bring him good manure

I should bring him good manure

(an inner compulsion to bring him good manure, conscience, his crops are failing, my cows are productive, once, he may have left me some good manure, it was late one night, I may have taken a few of the cakes clinging to the side of his hut but I intended to return them)

I have to bring him good manure

(an external compulsion, contractual, say, or a danger to my person, possibly bhuta or minor spirit possession)

(unless manure bestowal were part of an exorcising ritual, in which case it would not be in the bhuta’s best interest)

Regardless, I will

Will you? Let’s say, we will bring good manure

At least, we are likely to

(how likely? whose shall we bring?)

(and if your intentions are purer, more deeply seated, than mine?)

I brought him good manure

(it was my habit, then you came)

FOR the childrens. The children and the animals. The animal children and children animals. Also, for the children accessories.

ADDENDUM to an essay on cosmogony. In the desert how does one divine eggs? How does everyone fit inside?

EACH HAIR: The sheets are green and the light is yellow

VERY MUCH like a vessel in which you have two choices. Spread a length of baling wire and, hands rust-striped, sew your seat back up. Or follow the instructions. Then, of a sudden, everything turns into instruction. Do you put the seat cushion to your chest and clasp forearms through the elastic straps provided? And if the plastic bag does not inflate, is the oxygen still sweet smelling? Have I left my head between my knees? Langurs (languorous) hang from the rhododendron trees, their fixed black lips bulging with instruction. At the falls, pedalboats in the concrete lake (rebar showing, rebar always showing, in case we need to add a second story) turn only circles. And the tiny tinny music, out the tired speakers, rings off the concrete; you recognize the words but the grammar gyres up with the spray from the falls, lit by the sun, and falls apart.

TWO suggestions concerning hair.