Oil

 

Halfway into the journey – just puncture me with a compass.
Zero-kilometer, where fabled rivers converge, reversing polarity: drain.
Suppose it a tunnel, at once the air is set tight as a lattice.
Hurray! You are launched from the maw of a soil-based yawn.i 

Hangnail, dangled all the way down to the switchflow entrails,
there to consult the register: vapors, extralarge rock, and the coiled bands.
You unfasten your jaw at the plywood façade like a conscript,
oil, the armed, double-barreled ram turns the corner: en garde! ii

Was it the flash of your whites – the dark maid leapt from her crypt and roams the garden,
or was it a wire dropped in the tub and the belle flickered and came up glass-eyed?
Point blast: oil, blinded, finds tertium, always non datur.
Sacked chimney retracts like a sleeve – oil, shuddering, mounts the rails. iii

Now you'd better watch out, convex mirror in hand she's a hawkeye.
As you sway on your rope you pass like floss through its hooked clove.
Everywhere, like drunken soldiers riding all night in a pissdrenched hallway,
oil droplet is dubbed, like hussein in a tub plus the Louvre. iv

In the end you discovered the caliphate shot through with secret phone lines,
as you muttered your prayers from a cliff with a low survival rate.
Balanced on Adam's peak or, to be precise, the endpoint of a wax museum,
you caught up with the subterranean ram and you screwed him in tight. v    

Just as jars, receding into the cellar, practice writing fives in dull glitter,
it was by the edges of things I knew my world as a child.
Killer ninjas, their ribbed clubs like neon bulbs discover the dripping
pitch. Frilled Rembrandt from the morgue picks his nose, and out comes the oil. vi

And once she was out, right away she dissolved into anesthetic,
on pliant beaches and in the rapid voids of a blasted crowd.
Seashell blitz and crackle of flashbulb crescents,
earth clods clogging the apertures… now you know where you are. vii   

You'd have tarred and feathered her, but preferred absolute indifference,
closed all the investigations and turned off the mirrors in unlike things.
And while she fumbles and beeps, resembling a senseless fleet in the triangle,
cautiously, like rearming in a backroom stall a syringe, viii   

while barrel on barrel she is stacking her golden towers,
while she's lining the eye with the self-dilating blanks
of her chromed oil tanks, turned inside out with hazard,
and while on the back of your forehead she runs through the dialog box, ix

and while Tartars are smearing their silent-era grins with oil,
while civilizations get caught in it like bugs in the Web,
while we plaster our noses with papers, while we lounge
on oil-drenched cliffs, while our beds reek of oil – delirium squared, x   

and while haloed and gowned you resemble (I draw like a child)
a spoon, while under your heel you sense a viscous reserve,
while you reign, cursing, existing, scratching a little,
oil weighs us against each other, and widens the gulf xi   

where the rivers lie down head to foot, listening to the chimes of the evening,
while sleep is mashing up glass, but keeps it from going down,
you are spun on the wheel, by command of the molten center, –
oil rises up to your throat, and curls up at the edge of the marsh. xii

 

 

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Notes

i

My life is at the center, you might as well stick a compass in the date.
The watershed between the rivers of North and South is an excised kilometer.
Supposing it a tunnel, you sense that [they] are laid out tight
the layers of molecules; and you fly up on the excavator's claw of the earth's entrails overturning beneath you.

The first line is an obvious Dante reference and comes very close to actually reproducing the first line of the Commedia as it appears in the Russian translation. I have, therefore, lifted verbatim the same line from an English translation that I liked. Halfway into the journey of our life... P. talks about his life being at the center, but he is also in the middle of an actual journey that occurs in the poem – i.e. in the place where rivers converge. Hence zero-kilometer, and the drain–the drain is a place into which all rivers flow. The last line is pretty vague: what P. means (as he says in his own comments) is that the earth opened up and revealed its insides. In the poem, this is rendered as a giant excavator taking a chunk out of the earth, and dragging P. upward along with it. In the second stanza he is hanging from this claw and observing the goings-on below. The North and South rivers, as P. explains, are actual rivers that flow in their respective directions and converge at the Valdai Watershed (hence for them it's zero-kilometer). But, this also being Hell (as the Dante reference implies), these are also the rivers that flow through Hades; therefore I have “fabled” – perhaps that's weak. I just want you to see where I'm coming from.

ii   

And hanging on a tooth, in the interstice where the rivers reverse polarity,
one can see: vapors, huge boulders, and the looped oil.
You stare like a soldier at the untied reality,
oil comes out against you, in the form of a ram with a double-coiled protrusion, you neophyte.

Teeth are what the claw of the excavator arm is called in Russian; perhaps it could also be called teeth in English. But it is also reminiscent of Satan at the center of hell gnawing on sinners. Therefore, I have hangnail. Rivers reverse polarity, because the ones coming from the north flow south and vice versa. The list of things you can see underground evokes very strongly an image you might see in a high school science textbook – cross-section of our planet. The last two lines are a play on words: Russian expression, staring like a ram at the new gates, meaning transfixed by something superficially foreign and new. Here P. is transfixed, not like a ram, but like a soldier. A soldier, it seems to me, views reality as kind of fake, like the plywood façade of a Hollywood western. He sees houses and people going about their peacetime business, but all of it seems like a play compared to what he has seen (this is my interpretation). Now, continuing the western motif, the ram that comes out of the gates in P's version is turned into an outlaw who rounds the corner to have a shootout with you. That's why he's armed and double-barreled. The abundance of r's in the last line is unintentional and makes the line almost ridiculous, but I couldn't think of anything else, without losing the continuity of the image.

iii

Was it you that lured the maid-oil into the garden of the Hesperides with white apples,
was it a wire that fell into a bath and the cinema froze?
The sheathed factory chimney sags after a precision blast,
oil goes on its own rumbling way, following the third, not given.

I'm not sure why there are white apples here or the Hesperides. Well, the apples are here because of the Hesperides, but why they're there -- not sure. The main thing here I think is that the apples are white, (“Full white” is actually a type of apple, like Granny Smith), that you can lure black oil out with white apples. From here on I get the feeling that oil stands for (among other things) poetry, something P. more or less denies. It's true, true metaphor is pretty rare in P. Most objects that appear in his poetry are real objects, but I have my reasons for reading it the way I do. Anyway, so you lure poetry out of the crypt with some apples, some stock poetic devices and myth references, or you shock her with electricity (maybe a heavy dose of alcohol or drugs) and she floats belly up. The cinema thing is tricky – this whole poem is filled with references to photography, flashes, exposures, light versus dark, so light that it's dark and vice versa. There is a parallel between the abysmal darkness of oil and the darkness associated with photography, the inversion of light (as on a photographic negative). Images and even prophetic images shine through the pitch-black oil, just like light shines through a negative… If oil is not poetry, but actual oil, then one can read it like this – a wire fell in a tub, a spark ignites a huge oil supply (metaphorically – an oil rush) and this leads to mass death and destruction, everyone floats belly up.

The factory chimney is just there for the effect. Acc. to P., when a chimney needs to come down, it is first draped in something like a tarp, and then exploded at the foundation, after which it sinks down contained. Why is it here? It continues the cinema motif. This poem is kind of a montage, and the sagging chimney, somehow certainly shown in slow motion, is part of the montage. It continues the theme of mass destruction, just like you see footage of an imploded building intercut with a Bugs Bunny cartoon when someone has an anvil dropped on his head, or someone has a phenomenal idea, or something like that.

The blast also signals the beginning of oil production and, consequently, oil wars. When I first read it, I actually thought the sagging pipe was a drilling mechanism. So the chimney goes down and oil comes up. This is another shot in the montage, rumbling oil rushes forth. Remember the tunnel in the first stanza? Now it is also clear that P. is on a train riding through the Valdai heights, and the rushing, rumbling oil is equated to the train rumbling in the night through the tunnel. Third, not given is the Russian translation of the L. tertium non datur. As in Eng. it only exists in the Latin version, I had to keep it that way.

iv

Dealing with this oil is like [being reflected] in a convex mirror – just like playing gloveless with an eagle,
you sway nearer and farther, having dodged its beak.
[Oil/beak?] doesn't let you pass in the vomit covered blue railcar hallway,
and [they] look like two drops of oil – drop of oil, basin with hussein in it, the Louvre.

The first line is an obnoxious double comparison. In my imagination it was simplified to a drop of oil, serving as a convex mirror (i.e. reflecting the speaker) and also being a dangerous and sharp-eyed hawk (in the previous line oil is called blind, in the original she is “deaf”, which means that she sort of rushes forth without any sense of where she's going and who she destroys on her way). So she is blind, but also keen-eyed. The speaker is still swaying on the thread from the “tooth” that he was on in the second stanza. trying to dodge the beak of the eagle. I used “clove” for beak for the rhyme, I admit, but I was encouraged to do it by the fact that the Russian word for beak is a cognate of clove (kl'uv).

Third line: P is in a train and drunken soldiers won't let him pass. He thinks they may be coming from one of the oil wars, so to him they are just one more manifestation of Her, and they are everywhere. Soldiers are really everywhere in Russian trains, and they all look alike, so everything is doubled.

Looking like two drops of water is a cliché in Russian, meaning looking exactly alike. Instead of water P. uses oil. Oil is a universal commodity, and all things associated with it, like hussein (not capped because there are so many of them) and the riches of the Louvre, are interchangeable, like money.

v

You had passed this phase under direction of an Arab despot,
lead by your hair over a cliff, where you did not expect to live.
Standing on an Adam's apple, or more precisely the melting point of wax,
you got hold of the subterranean ram, and you screwed him in on the horns.

P. is suddenly transformed into an oil prospector (though if oil is poetry this makes sense), knows that he is really controlled by some Arab despot who keeps all the oil concerns in his grip. So, this depot, and he could be modern or ancient – a caliph – had him dragged over a cliff, to scare him or something. The despot is in the business of exerting his will over people. He turned P. upside down and put him on his Adam's apple. But it is P., perhaps, who has his foot on someone's neck (oil's, that is), and in the end wins the day. Now the melting point of wax is important, as this temperature is very near normal body temperature. And wax (some wax, it seems) is a petroleum byproduct. So, here oil for the first time takes on human features, the inorganic becoming organic. Recall that oil is a convex mirror, trying to reflect you—i.e., to assume your likeness, and double you, so that your individuality is lost, and you become one of oil's disguises. Thus, oil's universality (like money's) reigns supreme.

vi

Just as pitchers receding into cellar darkness mark it with sharp fives,
the first third of my life I remember only by outlines of objects.
Killers are hidden, but their ribbed clubs, like neon bulbs, shade the bruises.
Tulp's fingers roam the morgue, poke the sky, and discover oil there.

P. is transformed back into his childhood: he remembers rows of pitchers or jars in the cellar whose outlines gleamed in the darkness if one opened the door slightly and let in some light. This is another reference to photographic exposure. In Russian schools, grade run from 5 to 1 (think A to F), so the childhood motif is reinforced by the image of the pitchers outlines “marking the darkness” with fives. I couldn't leave five as a mark because it would be incomprehensible to American readers, but to keep the grammar school association I have them practice writing fives—i.e., rows of pitchers with only the outlines visible, resemble a row of fives, as though in a notebook where someone is practicing writing a five. Dull glitter comes from the sensation you get when you stare at something, then close your eyes and in the darkness see the outline of the object burned into your retina – it looks like dull glitter. The “photographic” property of the eye and of memory (line 2 of this stanza) are all through together.

The childhood theme continues with hidden killers in the third stanza (in Russia, kids are all about ninjas, black assassins that can become invisible in darkness. Ninjas do not have ribbed clubs, but that's just details). In any case, kids are afraid of the dark, fearing that perhaps killers are hidden somewhere. This frightening darkness of childhood is of course OIL; oil also manifests in bruises inflicted by real attackers, and it drips in place of blood. Once the body is in the morgue, it's examined by Dr. Tulp (an anatomist immortalized by Rembrandt. Acc. to P., Rembrandt's portraits look like the person is emerging out of a pool of black oil – everything around him is viscous black). Tulp, who is so steeped in oil that only his hands are visible in the darkness of the morgue (hands with white frills), is rummaging around it (in search of oil?). In Russian, “To poke the sky” means to “discover” something obvious, as though someone had asked you to point out the sky – you can't miss it. It's as easy as picking one's nose. There is such an abundance of oil in the morgue that Tulp can simply pick his nose, or the nose of any corpse, and the oil will flow.

vii

And when she came out, out of black nature she resorted to numbness,
so the sand lightens, and the crowd disperses after a blast.
Maneuvers of seashells and flashes under the sickles of eclipses,
soils advancing into close-up… And you understood where you ended up…

Dr. Tulp, whatever he may stand for here, has set oil free, although she has already been freed in the third stanza. Regardless, once she comes out, war and mass destruction begin. “Numbness” here is ambiguous – for some she acts like an anesthetic, like pliant wet sand when you step on it – it cushions. There is something sinister in this image, though, reminding me somehow of radiation. She makes others numb with terror, as in terrorism and bombs exploding in public places. Seashell (crackling) and flashes (of the sea) are reinterpreted as war images – shells and fired rounds. Eclipse – death. People are thrown into mass graves, and the soil advances over their dead eyes, i.e. really close up. You understand where you are – in hell.

viii

You would have drowned her in a barrel of whitewash, but gave her nothing in return,
you interrupted your searches and turned off the mirrors in unlike things,
and while she slowly fumbles, like the incoherent fleets in the Bermudas,
cautiously, like needles are changed in bathroom stalls,

Now P. knows what damage this oil (his poetry?) can do – so he should come out in protest against it, but he does nothing. He abandons his mining (his poetic experiments) and turns away from mirroring unlike things—i.e., he stops with metaphors.

From here on, Oil is revealed at the root of much of what we know as reality. It has already manifested itself as photography, soldiers, husseins, the Louvre, ninjas, cellars, bruises, blood, etc. The following stanzas continue this device. Oil is slowly groping her way to wherever she'll next well up; just as oil tankers grope around lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Oil hypnotizes us; it is a drug.

ix

and while she stacks barrel upon barrel her yellowish towers,
and while on a string she walks the self-straining blind spot
of silver tanks, collapsed in the outward direction,
and while on the back of your forehead she runs through the dialog box,

Oil is stacking up barrels, like a pile of gold coins. These tanks are chromed, so they don't heat up in the sun. On a sunny day, they are unbearably bright. You can't even look at them – they become blind spot. A blind spot is also a part of the eye (i.e., the optic disk, where the optic nerve joins the eyeball. Oil has gotten hold of this anatomy too). The danger oil tanks contain is so immense they seem to be straining from the inner pressure. Eventually they turn inside out (collapsing outward), and the oil spills from them, flooding everything.

P. seems to have this idea that objects enter the eye (or their images do), which are then processed and projected inside the skull onto the back of the forehead, as onto a screen. There on the screen, P. reads his images and metaphors and puts them out in the form of poetry. Oil has invaded his projector also.

x

and while the Tartars dip their finger in her and smear their cheekbones,
and civilizations get caught in it like bugs in the Internet,
while we stick petals on our noses, lounging on oil-flooded cliffs,
and while our sheets smell like oil, which is double delirium,

Tartars smearing their faces with oil is, acc. to P., actual footage from the Soviet industrialization days of 1930's. They'd just found oil in Tatarstan, and the workers were flapping around in pools of it, all grinning and happy. Sticking petals on noses – to prevent your nose from getting sunburned. There's a cliché in Russian – something is flooded with the sun—i.e. flooded with sunlight. Instead of sun, P. inserts oil, and cliffs flooded with sunlight become flooded with oil. Sheets smell like flesh, sex, desire, etc. – but for all of these P. finds a single metaphor – oil. Double delirium – two lay on the bed, both delirious.

xi

And while in a long dress and a high hairdo you look like a spoon --
I sketched you naively -- while you sense underfoot an oil reserve,
while you reign, getting mad at yourself, exist, scratch a little, --
the counterweights of distances are on oil's side, which oil separates us,

Here P. addresses his beloved (woman/muse?) for the first time. Everywhere else “you” means oneself; here, it's another person. Oil is also the metaphor for the feminine mystery (she has a reserve of oil under her foot). Counterweights – a set of weights used to counterbalance whatever is weighed on scales (i.e., you put a kilo of meat on one side and a kilo counterweight on the other side, see if they match, add or subtract counterweights accordingly). Here, P. and his beloved are put on the scales. The distance separating them is like the beam of the scales, which belong to the oil.

xii

where the rivers lie down head to foot to hear the bells of Valdai,
while sleep forces you to chew glass, but does not allow you to swallow,
the Earth's core, she can't help it, spins you on train wheels,
oil rises in your throat. The silt at the shore pulls her and presses itself to her.

Rivers lie down head to foot because they flow in opposite directions. In Russian it's called “laying jack-like,” because on playing cards jacks (as with all face cards) are upside down mirrored images. Valdai is where everything takes place, revealed only in the last stanza. In it, after all the rumination and reflection his train ride inspires, the poet goes to bed. Life seems to him vain and sleep-like. It's like chewing glass, but death is just as appalling. So he knows he won't swallow the glass and rid himself of his dream-like existence. Meanwhile the train keeps moving, the Earth spins. Somewhere, at the core, oil is controlling the earth's movements, and the train's. Oil rises in the throat – once again P. takes a stock expression, “blood rises in the throat,” a kind of horrific image where you are about to choke on your own blood, and inserts oil instead. The last sentence is vague – it seems to be constructed from “being asleep” imagery – pulling the blanket over yourself and pressing yourself against something – if you are sleeping next to someone, especially. P. is sleeping alone, as he is on the train. His beloved is far away, but he may be dreaming that she is with him. The whole action, however, is transferred onto oil and silt. The silt pulls the oil over itself like a blanket (in the darkness, mud at the edge of the Valdai watershed might resemble viscous oil), and presses itself into the oil, as though they slept next to each other. I have it as oil curling up at the edge of the marsh, which is probably weak, so I'll try to think of something better. But it will be a few days – I need a certain amount of space between writing something and reworking it. So for now, this is it. Hope you find these comments comprehensible.

 

 

 

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