Transactions take place in each lover’s consciousness

Like when he says I love you, he means I love those parts of you that cut my dark 

The empire used indentured labourers from South India

on its coffee, tea and rubber plantations in the 19th century

[To search for another word for empire]

In Kalaripayattu when the leg makes a circular kicking action outwards 

it is described as puram. When the motion is inwards: agam

Agam: the interior landscape, or love poetry, in Tamil from the second century BC

What he said:  I want to make love to you again

and again in a thunderstorm

It was a mahogany tree that Guevara planted, once upon a time in Ceylon

Once upon a time is a lazy translation of the Tamil ore oru oorile…in that one and only town

What he said: I want to know language 

that bites with its specificity

‘His favourite garden in the world had been the grass garden at Kew, the colours so delicate and various’

Guevara had been part of a trade delegation from Cuba. 

His glamorous interpreter stood next to him in a black and white photograph.

To search for the interpreter’s name without success

‘Though we have come through / the hot dust of sunbeaten wastelands’ 

is a line from Ramanujan’s translation of the Ainkurunuru

And it was bold of him to think that there was some interiority 

or subjectivity that remained

Puram: the public domain, the praise of kings, poets and war

‘And there is yet another Cuzco, a vibrant city whose monuments bear witness to the formidable

courage of the warriors who conquered the region in the name of Spain…’

Before love, before war, there was—

Screaming is an effective way to reduce the experience of pain

And pain, like all cycles in nature, longs for its completion