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.