Stopped me at the entrance, "don't go
Into the broken world," where they
Describe what they can't remove,
An orator's stool from Iatmul,
Our Lady of Iguanas headdress taken from use,
Vanuatu totem poles head atop head atop head
With eyes huge, spiralling with Kundalini,
Elongated skulls from Rapa Nui in volcanic stone,
Shell helmet shelters with porcupine quills, shaman's
Bags crowned like vibraphones with black-bone charms,
Tridents of mind with sharktooth obsidian
And of course the dap dap mortars
To break the betel nut and see God
Cut with lime. Each mortar renders a vision
It inspired: jaguar, blown mind, insect limbs for flying.
Well-documented, too, the Kula exchange of shells
Among 18 island nations, sharing all they had
Every year from ancient wavesplitters
And splashboards dragon-carved.
The Baining Fire Dance on the Gazelle Peninsula
Where young man at age wear giant eyes all night
To see, presumably, the way in the darkness
To the all.
Every mask is built precisely
To reveal. The giant temple drum
Despite its magnificence holds some
Memory of how sound changes things.
The immortals are musical notes, in fact,
And are played like the Chinese emperor ordered
The horses with bulging eyes and flaring nostrils
He prized to be commanded as ideal out of sculpture.
Writing didn't come til after the flood
Yet it flourished wherever seas brought calligraphers
Who made the word become flesh ...
But there are places where the sacred
Flourished instead, where the birds were
Allowed to keep their notes, the shamans
Their unreality-altering berries, and no one
Lacked wisdom in the absence of words.
It is always an afterthought, these places
That are still too alive for history,
That still resist being catalogued,
The last frontier of our childhood terror.
