Dream Poem 41: Liars and Cheats  

On a tour of Papua New Guinea, 
Our group are visiting some people in a small village in the Highlands.
It’s all going wrong.

People are behaving badly to each other
Disrespecting local customs and walking through corn fields, crushing the corn.
At the village shop we are causing jealousy and bad feeling, 
buying too much food 
and junk snacks crisps and sweets. 
People in the queue are tutting and judging and saying “it’s not fair.”

We want to leave as the situation is getting worse
but one of the women of our group
has disappeared into a neighbouring house and she won’t come out.
She says she wants to stay.

I resign myself to that fact.
I’ve tried to persuade her but she is adamant she is staying.
I go to negotiate with the host, the owner of the house.
He says he has an important confession to make,

“What is it?”
“I haven’t been honest with you.” He says.

But now, because of the woman, whom he loves he is willing to tell the truth.
Now he is willing to be honest and come clean about it all.

This is the truth that he has been hiding from us all this time.
The wisdoms and songs he has shown us in the villages
among the tribes and the totems with the Papua New Geinean peoples –
These are not the real ones.
He was doing it to please us.

The real stories and songs have been forgotten.
They have not been used for generations and they have passed out of living memory.
They are gone.
The real songs and stories are lost forever.

In order to have something to show us the visitors, 
who have travelled so long and so far to see them, 
the honoured guests who are so interested in the past 
and in piecing together the history, 
new songs and stories were made up.
They were taken from other places and cobbled together.

After hearing this I was very disheartened, disillusioned and upset.
Why had they lied?
Why didn’t they just say the songs and storied were gone?

I wandered back into the village leaving the house and the man and his love.
All was changed in my eyes.
What had been a strange new land 
is now just the same as home
or everywhere else.

Full of liars and cheats.
People good and bad
just getting by.
After this revelation I realize it’s time to go.
My time is up,
there is no more to be found here.


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