Deep in the Amazonas,
two bugs with long legs and horrible wings
bounced up and down, eating each other, I guess,
beneath this enormous leaf that you lifted
with the tip of your broken machete
in feigned curiosity.

This was after the worms you called serpents
squiggled in our ankle-deep mud,
after your so-called jaguar tracks, after that tumour was chopped off
of the tree trunk and the termites poured out,
even after the green-eyed poisonous frog,
but well before dusk when, Clarindo,
you told us to turn on the light.

Clarindo, Clarindo, you ******* artist,
those tracks were the village dog's
and it was our light that attracted the Cobra Grande,
who rose from the shadows and fell on my back,
pressing its fangs through my chest then listening to hear
if I breathed, while all you could do was bang
your machete on the great Ceiba tree,
which (as you knew) was provocation not remedy
in such a darkness, the one we now knew
overtook us.