'All the Members of My Tribe are Liars' - John Fuller

This poem illustrates perfectly John Fenton's view that "a good poem takes some irresolvable complication, worries it to death like a dog with a bone, and leaves it still unresolved. The pleasure of the poem lies entirely in the worrying, the verbal growling and play. Life itself stubbornly remains entirely like a bone.” 


ALL THE MEMBERS OF MY TRIBE ARE LIARS

Think of a self-effacing missionary 
Tending the vices of a problem tribe. 
He knows the quickest cure for beri-beri 
And how to take a bribe. 

And so the mind will never say it’s beaten 
By primitive disturbance of the liver; 
Its logic will prevent its being eaten, 
Get it across the river. 

But faced with this assured inconsequence 
That damns the very method that is used, 
It leaves the heart unproselytised and hence 
Admits that it’s confused. 

I know I’m acting, but I still must act. 
I melt to foolishness, and want it ended. 
Why it continues is this simple fact: 
I’d hate to end it. 

For now the jungle moods assert their terms 
And there’s no way to check them if they lie: 
The mind attempts to solve the thing, but squirms 
And knows exactly why. 

The world is everything that is the case. 
You cannot see it if you are inside it. 
That’s why the tortoise always wins the race: 
the very terms decide it. 

I cannot help it if I am contented 
With being discontented that I falter: 
That’s why psychology was first invented 
So that we needn’t alter. 

It is a strange position to be in. 
It would be different if I didn’t know 
Why the unlikely animal should win, 
Which cannibal should row. 

You’d think there’d be a way of cutting out 
Those self-destructive layers of introspection. 
To reach the truth at last without a doubt 
Of making the connection. 

That’s why the missionary, on his guard, 
Is wondering why the cannibal’s so merry, 
And why it is so very very hard 
To be a missionary.