Three Poems to the Eternal Beloved by J.J. Phillips
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.