Three Poems to the Eternal Beloved by J.J. Phillips |
by J.J. Phillips |
|
J.J. Phillips rearranges Plato's Cave! Then she puts everything back!
For W.J. F., S.J. Who taught me how to read The Handwriting on the Wall
1
Port Moresby Valediction
“Ia lao gunika lokohu taraika gwauria”*
If someone should ask for me say, One night white-hot molten with desire she went inland
into the rain-forest, deeper into the cloud-forest she went to douse the fire
she went inland into the trackless hinterlands of the heart. She took blow-pipe and dart.
She went inland alone that night she said to shoot the footless bird of paradise.
* Translation: “He went inland to shoot birds of paradise.” This phrase, copied from a grammar of Police Motu, a formerly dominant New Guinea pidgin spoken around the environs of Port Moresby. A useful phrase one must suppose. In the exquisite pain and delirium of my hypertrophied but thwarted desire for the Eternal Beloved, I desperately thought about leaving everything behind, flying off to New Guinea carrying nothing but a Cynic’s wallet (whatever that was), and disappearing into the bush to begin a new life in a wild and remote land far away from everything familiar. Only an act so drastic could exorcise this harrowing l’amour fou. I thought I’d prepare myself by learning some Police Motu so that I could begin to communicate as soon as I arrived, and found an old grammar in the UC Berkeley Library. But I never got much further along than memorizing a few phrases such as the one that inspired this poem, and “sisia ia mass to boroma ia mauri” – “the dog is dead but the pig is all right,” another undoubtedly indispensable everyday phrase which completely flummoxed me. During the Age of Exploration, Europeans often received the carcasses of birds of paradise, much valued for their plumage, minus their feet and sometimes their wings (thus the taxonomic designation Paradisciea apoda for the Greater Bird of Paradise). Legends arose that they had no feet, so were perpetually in flight until death, and continually oriented toward the sun. Spaniards called them birds of the gods (birds of paradise). Fallen Idylls (an anti-pastoral) Love never settles on that which has lost its bloom or that which has no bloom Plato I
For the last time I lie down with my dreams of you such dreams as Sibyls have who whore with words but could not love for lack of faith yet would kill time asking why they do not die when blood runs cold and heart goes faint.
The Furies spread their couches down there in the cave there I lie there I rave thin of skin glazed of eye
feeding on the word of gods while all the things around me die.
Deep in the cave the secrets turn in me like larvae turning in the grave I see the sky is falling the planets recede my world goes flat I sink by degrees down between the seconds pitched into the void space and time collapsed, destroyed
because some hungry goats believe I write secrets on the leaves.
II
Now all my myths and dreams are gone and time is long of tooth. Still this smitten flesh can find no rest to lie alone among the leaves my clicking tongue marking time waiting for some words to rise while all my gods break down and die.
But if some autumn afternoon the wind disturbs the leaves leap up the secret lost they dance this is not circumstance.
Look and see how Logos lies raveled in my thighs hypostatized.
3
Stern Eros after Callimachus
Stern eros says desire must die
flense your skin poke out your eye
cut the cords of your tongue pierce the tympanum
no songs can be sung no rhythms sprung no changes on the body rung.
Chop off your lips lop off your breasts.
As for the rest old girl seek entropy at best. |
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