Me and some soaked-through Japanese
on the platform out in the hurtling spray
in the throat of the falls of Iguaçu.
One takes my camera and snaps a few
quick shots of me. And would I please
do the same? And I do. “I was there, one day,”

I’ll think sometime, when the normalcy
of my other days compels me to pictures
of my briefer, foreign intensities.
I’ll take pictures of you, if you will please
assist with the requisite pictures of me
amidst foreign falls and alien structures.

So here’s me in the very throat of the Devil,
at the juncture of three nations, each all fucked up.
The falls are immense, and intense, and affordable
to people like me, whose accounts are accordable
with happy complacency. The governments are evil
on all three sides, here, and the appalling drop

of all this water will soak you through,
but absolves you of nothing. The Devil swallows
in continuous uproar the pain of this place.
it leaves you breathless, ail this falling from grace,
but the photos are, for us chosen few,
the only consequence that follows.

At home, when ice crystals gather on glass,
and the traffic adheres to its usual route,
safe in your chair and your sinecure,
you’ll examine this glossy of you and adventure.
The locals must live with the falls and duress:
Here’s a picture of you in the Devil’s Throat.