Glass Brunette
A poem with a subsequent analysis of the author himself
The reptile reached the sandy land
and found the realm of huge silent sheep
the sheep were all fleshy and greasy
and he just wanted to fall asleep
He covered the Sun with his body
and with dark skin picked up the rays
as he sank into reptile dreams
the sheep builders cut him into lanes
They made a palace out of a reptile
nicer and safer than the last day
because the reptile’s body rots for a long time
and disperses wraiths by hot decay
Before analysis
Seemingly, this poem is nothing but a singable fable piece. At least that’s how it looked to me at first. It appeared out of nowhere, like many others in my most prolific phase. The words were just falling out of my head. I grabbed them and glued them to the paper as fast as possible so they couldn’t flee.
But, during the subsequent analysis, I found many interesting things.
Analysis
My need to assign titles to poems that seem to have nothing to do with the content is not my invention. I don’t know exactly who made it up first. It was part of my urge to make everything sound even more abstract. Although I later alleviated that “title” propensity, the desire for a desperate (but organized) deviance of expression has persisted.
The reptile most often represents a repulsive being that, in the depths of human fear, is synonymous with a biological killing machine.
In the original Serbian version, the role of sheep is played by ants, in order to achieve the effect of contrast: a sluggish, bloodthirsty, and voracious reptile whose job it is to kill carelessly, as opposed to tiny, benign, and (overly) diligent ants.
The sheep were chosen in the English rendition due to the necessity for melody and rhyme. This modifies the picture somewhat, but the core message remains mostly intact.
Unexpectedly, instead of the usual killing, the reptile only wished to sleep. Although it could pose a “logical” development in the overall “illogicality” of the poem, this also represents an attempt to surprise readers (including myself) with the initial point in a series of unforeseen events.
Thus, the first shy hints appear that the reptile could soon become a — victim.
Indeed, it turned out that the sheep (meaty, fatty, and evil) were the ones who “had to” kill the reptile with the intention of building (another) palace.
What kind of palace again?!
The palace here symbolizes a sequel in a long series of unnecessary sacrifices in the form of the life of a creature that (perhaps) had no bad motives, with an investment of time and effort to build a palace for which the price is too high, and which, in fact, does not serve anything useful. (Why would I, for God’s sake, build something needless at an insane price while other mortals around me are starving, getting sick, and dying helplessly?)
In this case, the reptile has been used as a phenomenon to describe the futility of human killing and suffering in unsightly endless days. A vainly and innocent victim that is ugly (and dead) enough so we can feel inarticulate sadness for it. Something like Chet Zar’s expressions of sad monsters that are “very ugly and freakish on the surface” while still retaining “innocence about them”.
Why are sheep so huge? The enormity of the sheep, along with their “fleshy” and “greasy” features, metaphors the immensity and multiplicity of the destructiveness they (namely, we — humans) potentially carry within themselves/ourselves.
And why are they silent? Because they quietly and robotically carry out the orders of someone who thinks instead of them.
The verse “nicer and safer than the last day” depicts the never-ending greed in our miserable lives. Since we are never content, we “wade on corpses”, deceiving ourselves that we are making progress and doing useful deeds.
So it turned out that the sheep made a palace out of their own sorrow, vanity, helplessness, and fear of death, for them, inconceivable shortness of life.
The dispersal of wraiths “by hot decay” in the last verse only intensifies all the uselessness and wastefulness of such “endeavors.” Wraiths are sins to be dispelled, till the next palace is built.
The main roles here are played by animals as personifications of the innocence of people incapable of giving purpose to their lives.
Other elements of the poem (sandy land, the Sun, dark skin, rays…) represent flesh that clings tightly to the poem’s bones, successfully performing contrast tasks and celebrating just another disaster in their own way.
But, here is not the end.
End of analysis
This poem has a form of pure imagination, with a pronounced urge to sound surreal sufficiently. I adore surrealism. It is the only field of art that has no boundaries. And I don’t like boundaries.
In Serbian, this song sounds infantile, fluent, and melodic. Something like a children’s song, with stained-blood instruments forgotten in the kid’s room with other broken toys. This angle of approach is just another tool in the box that aspires to produce as strong an impression as possible. “Stab the dagger in the brain,” I call it.
“If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul;
You haven’t experienced poetry”
Edgar Allan Poe
In English, I (partially) achieved such an impression with minor modifications.
Anyway, my goal was to synthesize the seemingly incompatible: the naivety and rhythmic of the “children’s” structure of the poem, the intertwining of innocent natural beauties with mind-crushing scenes, the effects of ominous contrasts, with a screaming sadness surrounded by unscrupulousness and cruelty, the transience of life, and finally, death.
Most of my poems are monuments to human beings, their hopes, desires, love, odiums, weaknesses, and fatal properties of not finding their convenient way in society and space, wandering endlessly in a tunnel called life.
Combining sarcasm, grief, and despair with the joy of life, which aims to generate a strong message, is a path I have built over time, reflecting, writing, and sinking deeper and deeper into my own brain.
I found all sorts of weird things there.
