Cargo Cult

I know of the sorcerers who summon the jets
From the jungles of New Guinea
They survey the skies coveting the money
That pillaging would bring them from that freight

On the Coral Sea, in the wake of that
Machine, those creatures who have no need
Of reason, those Papuans wait to see
The wreck of an Airbus and of a Comet

And because their totem hasn't ever been able to bring down
Either a Boeing or even a Fokker to the ground
They dream of hijacks and of collisions with gulls

Those naive ship-wreckers armed now
With blowguns who make sacrifice to the cargo cult
As towards the sky and the airplanes their poison darts are bound

Where are you Melody and your lost frame
Is it haunting the archipelago where the sirens are becalmed?
Or is it clinging to the plane whose alarm
Siren has gone silent, did you remain?

Floating on the currents, have you already found
Those luminous corals of the Guinean coasts and sailed
Where those indigenous sorcerers still hope in vain
For planes to be brought to the ground?

Having nothing to lose nor a God to believe in
And so that they might return my trivial passions
I, like them, I call to the night cargo planes

And I hold onto that hope of an aviation disaster
That would bring Melody back again
A child taken captive by the lure of the stars there

What was your name?
Melody
Melody what?
Melody Nelson