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.

Copyright Credit: John Fuller, “All the Members of My Tribe Are Liars” from Collected Poems, published by Chatto & Windus. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited, http://www.randomhouse.co.uk.

Source: Collected Poems (1996)