In Oils

1

Between fjords and the Firth, the rig whirred
from its crown-block to the pit of its possum belly –
my father left at dawn to work the offshore fields.
He mixed with roughnecks and a crude-talking toolpusher:
their toil lit the flarestack, sparked fuses, stoked motors.
Farther north, the trickle and tick of ice floes.

That year’s gales uprooted dunes, hurled gulls
along Union Street; the derrick braced its anchors,
strained against the storm-surge.
                                                        His chair sat empty.
The desk paperweight: a drop of Brent crude
globed in glass, the tarry slick levelling as I tilted it.
I tried to pray for breezes to ferry him home,
but all I could invoke were fields of North Sea oil:
Magnus, Beatrice, Loyal.

2

I was nine, when my father made me leave –
he drilled an emirate with straight-ruled borders.
The heat on the runway like the breath of a foundry.
My Narnia books arrived after their voyage
along the Suez Canal, in the sea-freight.
Wearing shorts was forbidden – even for men.

Mirage city, under the warp-shimmer of fifty degrees.
Sun-beaten metal. Lightstruck glass,
the bombed-out bridge to Bubiyan Island.
At the sandstone ridge on the edge of Iraq,
herdsmen turned camels loose to trigger landmines.

At school, they preached that oil was fossil light:
one barrelful did twelve years’ human work.
Dad’s friends talked Bonny Light, Brent Blend,
Sour Heavy Crude, counting days in gallons.
Oil was refined, but its temper had a flash-point –

3

I’d listen from the landing:

“They kicked down the door
of the neighbours’ shop,
then bullets started shattering the windows.
Khalid and I ran.
We saw tanks lumbering down Gulf Street.

They stole everything – air conditioners, cigarettes –
then torched the ground floor.
My cousin shot at the police station they’d seized.
They tore out his eyes.”

“The burning pipeline howled –
Sara said like a jet engine.
Fire-trenches and oil-lakes under a sky dark at midday.
Six million barrels of light, sweet crude…”

“I watched birds wading in the slick-ponds.
There was a hoopoe drinking petroleum,
an oiled eagle panting for water.”

“Airstrike on the Basra road:
the man clawed at the windscreen,
trying to smash free before the petrol tank blew.
An American camera blinked at his burnt out sockets.”

4

From Anchorage, Calgary, Houston or Galveston,
my father returned, jet-lagged and running fumes,
to plant English lavender on Texan time.
His shirts would smell of earth and gasoline.
I’d see him at the sink, scrubbing his hands:
“I’ve fixed the engine!” He’d show his palms –
I watched him scouring skin that wouldn’t come clean.

A two-stroke heart has steely valves and chambers,
a trace that falters. He said he’d hike the path
above the falls, but dusk could not bring him home –
The spring after we buried him, I heaped his books
in a rusty petrol-drum, and flicked the match. A pyre
for Goodbye to All That, Fire in the Night and Pioneer.