The last place for a waterfall, no mountains or valleys,
horizons flat as summer seas, then from thirty miles,
a white tower of spray punctures the blue sky.
Closer, you hear thunder, though there is no storm,
see double rainbows, bright bridges across air,
feel a welcome drizzle in searing, blistering heat.
Closer, you part a bush, stand on the edge of a chasm;
the wide Zambesi glides forward, then plunges deep
into a wound in the earth’s crust, a break in basalt.
The ground trembles with shock, you shout but hear
nothing except a raging roar as solid water
explodes up in your face, blinds you, engulfs you.
Down in the Devil’s Cataract, the river cuts frantic
zigzags through deep gorges until it pours into a pool
where a dead hippo bounces up like a rubber ball.
[Mosi-oa-Tunya: the Victoria Falls, translated as "Smoke that Thunders"]
Eveline Pye lectured in statistics at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland for more than twenty years. Before that, she worked as an operational research analyst in the Zambian copper industry. Her poems about Africa and mathematics have been widely published in literary magazines, newspapers, and anthologies in the U.K.
Her statistical poetry was featured in Significance, the joint magazine of the British Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association, in September 2011 as part of its Life in Statistics series. A selection of her statistical poems appears in the Bridges (Enschede) Anthology, edited by Sarah Glaz (Tessellations Publishing, 2013).