Two more poems to complement Kerim’s recent post about Adrian Rich’s poem which so eloquently explains why we should all be reading more -Derrida- Gadamer. These, however, come from Some Of Our Favorite Melanesianists:
Men black as birds perch aslant the light on the soaked grey platform house, over them blows a white gleam of rain, their eyes tight with a fear that needs no gods, with the merchandising of death, they pull the sharp stink of woodsmoke through their guts; being men, they are not often brave, they kill seldom and sloppily, but hold their lives firm against the horror man makes to try his own heart; beyond the sprawling forms vines and leaf-furze blots the late afternoon, cloud boils through the humped ranges seeding the land with myths.
-Roy Wagner, Curse of Souw
Chilling.
A word for now: I could have sworn we never talked
that way.
It was Home Office (for everything not foreign
or specialist), not Homeland Office;
Home not Homeland Guard (local defense in WWII).
It must have existed before --
My Collins dictionary has two short notes.
homeland 1. the country in which one lives or was born; 2. the official name for Bantustan
There you have it! From the occupation of Poland
to ethnic cleansing!
Today, Homeland Security. Birthrights.
The dictionary also lies, then. Homeland is not where
you live if you've travelled there.
An unsafe place, barbed
-Marilyn Strathern, Shock and Awe: War on Words
[snorts] Call that a Melanesianist Poem? Now this is a Melanesianist Poem. Straight from the archives of the man himself, never before published, exclusive like, I humbly present to you:
Ode on the Departure of Dr Rivers.
Far out on the Atlantic Ocean,
The Adriatic throbs and quivers,
Bearing, sub-conscious of her motion,
One W. Halse Rivers Rivers.
Not now ‘neath influence alcoholic
(Taken he tells us in small doses)
His journey is no idle frolic;
High aims a lofty soul proposes
A spirit final, touched – he tells us –
(The truth, he holds, can never hurt you
And a glory, scarce familiar, swells us
Reflecting on our fellows virtue) –
‘Tis honest work that nerves that spirit
– Work, the one motive beatific,
That spurs him to the quest of merit,
Far sought in isles of the Pacific.
He goes – his course the College blesses,
If College blessings may avail him,
Trusting all adequate sucesses
Requite his toil & never fail him.
Fire sticks, and exogamic fancies,
Totems, & sacred dental lesions,
Taboos, and heirophantic dances,
May he enjoy his Melanesians –
May he lure colour sense & magic
From out of the Solomonian cranium;
Nor gullet, too anthropophagic,
Find him a toothsome succedaneum.
With tape anthropologic girded,
May he return with lore most wondrous,
And honest labour aptly worded,
Find guerdon in two volumes ponderous.
anon. St John’s College, Cambridge. Dec 1907.