May 2023

POETRY

THE SHIP OF THESEUS AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

By David SelzerMay 25, 20235 Comments2 min read2.8K views

Theseus, with the help of Ariadne,

daughter of Minos, King of Crete, slew

the Minotaur – that creature with a bull’s head

and a man’s body – in the labyrinth

which imprisoned him. They rescued the fourteen

noble youths and maidens of Athens,

sacrificial tribute, who had been food

for the Minotaur. With the princess

and the young people, Theseus escaped

from Crete and sailed his trireme to Athens.

(En route he left Ariadne on Naxos,

for reasons which need not detain us here).

The Athenians, in gratitude for saving

the scions of their nobility, revered

the ship in which they had returned, maintained it

for many centuries – replacing

rotten timber, frayed rope, and torn canvas.

Inevitably, this being Ancient Greece,

a problem arose, and persists even now,

of a philosophical nature:

at what point, if any, does the Ship of

Theseus cease to be Theseus’ ship?

Thomas Hobbes – sometime mathematics tutor

to Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II –

and most famous for opining, during

the havoc of the English Civil War,

that life in anything other than

a comprehensive autocracy

would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish

and short’ – posed an interesting what if

regarding The Ship of Theseus.

Imagine that, instead of recycling

the redundant parts for, say, fuel,

they had been made the responsibility

of a custodian, who rebuilt the ship

following the original blueprint,

so that, in time, there would have been two vessels,

both from the original design,

one from the original materials –

and the latter, Hobbes concluded, might still

properly be identified as

The Ship of Theseus. Some, however,

may think the issue of identity

irrelevant, one ship being seaworthy,

the other a tad dystopian –

which brings me neatly to the House of Windsor

aka Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, aka

Hanover, Stuart, Tudor etcetera.

Proper names belong, are unique, confer,

confirm, create identity: Ariadne

of Naxos, the Minotaur of Knossos –

who, by the way, were siblings, but that tale

is for another day. So, to Charles III,

tax dodger, and ersatz Renaissance man:

who seems unlike his gaudy namesakes –

the father, who spectacularly lost his head;

the son, something of a stage door Johnny –

except both his predecessors also believed

they had been anointed by God himself,

and were similarly obsessed with worldly wealth.

He can trace his line to Alfred the Great,

King of the Anglo-Saxons, and Kenneth

MacAlpin, King of the Picts. All of which is

as insubstantial and insignificant

as an imagined splinter from the deck

of some mythical ship.

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POETRY

ON THE RWANDA PLAN

By David SelzerMay 25, 20233 Comments2 min read2.1K views

One of the things that demonstrates how we are

a cut above lesser animals, even

our closest, primate cousins – in addition,

of course, to double entry bookkeeping –

is our ability to plan and manage

projects: like fox hunting and the Pyramids.

However, we should never forget

‘of mice and men’, ‘betwixt cup and lip’,

and ‘unintended consequences’ – like

throngs of tourists and urban foxes.

And take, for example, some of the proffered

solutions by European Powers

to the so-called ‘Jewish question’: Britain’s

Balfour Declaration, and the two

Madagascar Plans in the ’30s – the first

was Franco-Polish, the second German.

The first plan involved the voluntary

re-settlement of thousands of Polish Jews

in the island of Madagascar,

then a French colony; the second,

following the fall of France, the enforced

migration of all European Jews

to act as hostages to ensure their

‘racial comrades in America’ behaved.

Both proved unfeasible – the former

because of climate and poor infrastructure,

and the latter because, having lost

the Battle of Britain, the Nazis

abandoned the invasion of the UK.

The requisitioned British Merchant Fleet

was to have shipped the Jews to the island.

As the forces of the Third Reich conquered

Eastern Europe and entered Russia

a new plan developed: to move the Jews

and the Slavs to Siberia, to starve

or be murdered. When the Soviets refused

to be defeated the Final Solution

to that inadmissible question –

Die Endlösung der Judenfrage –

was devised: the building of gas chambers

at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek,

Sobibor, Treblinka.

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POETRY

‘DARKWATERS’, TATE LIVERPOOL, 2023

By David SelzerMay 25, 20231 Comment2 min read2.5K views

‘High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.’

‘The Souls Of White Folk’, DARKWATER, W.E.B.Dubois, 1920

Much of the stone and brick of this city – built

along the river’s shore and the low hills

rising from it – was made from sugarcane

and cotton, cut from the backs of African

slaves, like much of the fortunes of England.

The Victorian dockside buildings have been

reengineered into apartments; gift shops;

eateries; a museum dedicated

to international slavery;

and one of four Tate art galleries,

named for Henry Tate, sugar magnate,

who endowed the first one in London,

then capital of a world wide empire

Each of the upper floors of the gallery

has kept the original, large, multi-paned

windows of the dockside warehouse, masked

as needed for exhibitions. The one

I am standing at faces west, down river,

towards Ireland, the Atlantic, the New World.

I can see the mouth of the estuary,

the beginnings of Liverpool Bay –

and imagine the molasses factory,

not far downstream, the Luftwaffe turned

to rubble, buckled girders and treacle.

On the walls and display boards behind me

are works from the Tate’s Turner collection:

sketches and water colours and oils of things

maritime – of turbulent seas lit

by a bright almost harsh opalescence.

Two of Lamin Fontana’s audio

installations are playing on a loop –

music and voices; the sounds of servitude,

pain and longing, immersed in the oceans.

Three thousand miles or more west south west

in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts

is Turner’s THE SLAVE SHIP, originally

entitled SLAVERS THROWING OVERBOARD

THE DEAD AND DYING—TYPHOON COMING ON.

The background is the storm approaching

against a romantic sunset of

violent orange; the middle ground

a top-sail schooner, sails furled, buffeted

by the unquiet seas; foregrounded are white birds

in flight, black manacled limbs sinking, black hands

briefly above the tumultuous waves.

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POETRY

IN DEFENCE OF WHATABOUTERY

By David SelzerMay 25, 20230 Comments1 min read1.5K views

There have been three anniversaries of note

so far this year: the first of the invasion

of Ukraine by the Russian Federation;

the twentieth of the invasion of Iraq

by the US, UK, Australia

and Poland; the fifty fifth of the My Lai

Massacre, the murder of five hundred

and two Vietnamese men, women, children –

all civilians – by a company

of American GIs. Aggressors

seem always only too able and willing

to justify such sociopathic

behaviour with self-serving casuistry

both before and after the fact. Remember

Oradour-sur-Glane; Amritsar; the

Armenian Massacres; Wounded Knee;

Alexander the Great destroying Thebes;

the Ancient Romans’ sacking Carthage

and killing tens of thousands; and Elisha,

on his way into the city of Bethel,

being met by a large group of little children,

who mocked him because of his bald head,

so he cursed them in the name of the Lord,

and two she-bears, emerging from a nearby wood,

tore forty two of the children to pieces.

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POETRY

THE ATLANTIC ARCHIPELAGO

By David SelzerMay 25, 20233 Comments3 min read2.4K views

It is an archipelago of small lakes,

streams, and rivers. I watch black headed gulls

at low tide flock westwards, seawards,

following the water courses – where eels

and salmon thrived – to the vast estuaries

of the Dee and the Mersey barely a league

apart. Rains – falling on the Welsh Mountains

and the Peak District, on Rowton Heath and Chat Moss,

on the Wirral Peninisula that divides

the two rivers’ mouths – comingle forever

in the Irish Sea with currents from the south,

the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico.

When I was a child the map was a picture

of an old man with hair wild in the wind,

his nose sharp, his jutting chin, riding a pig,

and following, chasing a large balloon.

Now I see the long North Atlantic seas

founder on the rocky, indented coasts

of Ireland and the Hebrides to merge,

north of Cape Wrath, between the Orkneys

and Shetland, into continental waters,

breaking from the North Sea and the Channel

on atlased cliffs and strands, on endless inlets

and promontories, perpetual coasts.

This archipelago of six thousand

surprising, shifting islands – for the most part

uninhabited by human beings,

still mostly green from space in daylight –

abounds with saints’ names, and with hallowed places.

Yet how the English aka Normans,

Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts

took the name of Jesus Christ in vain

so as to scourge their nearest neighbours –

Oliver Cromwell at Drogheda,

William III at Glencoe – nowhere

too small or modest for lethal bigotry!

Later the English anglicized the place names

in Celtic lands. Their army engineers

built single track bridges in the Highlands

so gun carriages could cross, and surveyed

the entire kingdom in case of uprisings.

The chalky, pebbly English Channel ports

appear to have been stuck strategically

on England’s rump so our masters may face down,

with florid rhetoric, through sunshine

and moonlight, mist and storm, perfidious

foreigners in occasional dinghies.

Yet here are infinite coasts of landfall:

Celtic warriors, Roman villas,

Saxon kingdoms, Viking settlements,

Norman castles, French speaking courtiers,

Latin in law courts and cathedrals,

and German dynasties on the throne!

The Celts were harried westwards into Wales.

There were Highland Clearances, the Great Hunger,

and English Enclosures of common land.

Wherever there were forests they were felled

to build ships. Wherever there were valleys

and streams floors of clattering, rumbling looms

were built. Wherever there was coal the earth

was torn open, and its history burned.

Canals were dug, iron rails laid, roads tarmacked,

and cities – with their civic halls, their squares,

museums, libraries, and back-to-back slums –

grew large on the Slave Trade and Empire,

as the English with their aiders and abetters

coloured the atlas pink with murder and greed.

When it all fell apart, they invited those

who had been servants and slaves to take jobs

in the archipelago, work the natives

would not or could not do. So the cities

have become celebrations of diversity,

testaments to there being one human race.

How the self-pitying nativists hate that!

What should be a welcoming commonwealth

is riven with squabbling, petty abstractions,

exploited by would-be demagogues,

and media-megaphoned by aged billionaires –

spiteful, mendacious citizens of nowhere!

I saw, one early August afternoon

on Lindisfarne aka Holy Island,

a tidal island off England’s north east coast,

home once of St Aidan and St Cuthbert –

a coach party from Newcastle about

to disembark. There were children, mothers,

grandmas – the women in hijabs. Suddenly

a cold sea mist – known locally as a haar

from the Middle Dutch for a cold, sharp wind –

blew in from the North Sea. They shook their heads,

sighed, laughed, and, speaking Urdu and English,

got back on the bus to have their picnic

in the warm and dry, bright mist swirling round them.

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BETWEEN RIVERS

BETWEEN RIVERS SPRING 2023: ‘CONNECTIONS’ BY SARAH LEWIS & DIANA SANDERS – ALAN HORNE

By David SelzerMay 11, 20230 Comments5 min read2K views

BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to BETWEEN RIVERS here: https://davidselzer.com/2022/05/between-rivers-introduction/.

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For May 2023 we have an issue devoted to a contemporary project which combines poetry and music together with some visual art. This is Connections by Sarah Lewis and Diana Sanders, which links creative work relating to two rivers close to their respective homes, the Alun in Flintshire (the Welsh spelling is preferred to Alyn, which we use above) and the Alwen in Conwy. Connections was originally published in 2016 as a pamphlet and accompanying audio CD. Poems and artwork are by the two authors, while the music is by Diana Sanders, Pete Regan and A Handful Of Darkness. This feature presents some selected items and then, in the hope that you may like to read and listen further, we have with the authors’ permission embedded the whole pamphlet and links to other audio tracks at the end.

In the introduction, Sarah Lewis describes the village in the Alun valley where she lives.

Rhydymwyn lies in the Alun valley. The river springs from the moors, high above Llangollen and winds its way down through the softer land, cutting through the limestone, and scooping out the valley on its way to join the Dee. The limestone and the river shaped the industry that grew in the valley around Rhydymwyn and the remains of lead mines, mills and leetes can all be found by the sharp-eyed wanderer. The presence of the river also influenced the sighting of a secret weapons factory during WW2. The site, owned by DEFRA, is now a managed nature reserve and accessible to the public through membership of one of the local groups. The camouflaged buildings, anti-spark paths, huge hangers and crumbling walls covered in old calculations and formulae, tell us of its history. But gradually nature is reclaiming her space. There are otters in the river, great-crested newts in the ponds, horseshoe bats in the tunnels, ravens in the woods, swallows in the hangers, grass snakes coiled under old rubble and a blissful peace that baffles and calms those who know of its turbulent past.

Diana Sanders describes her home too, and we can immediately see the contrast.

The second valley is that of the river Alwen and the village of Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr which was the inspiration behind William Wordsworth’s poem Vale of Meditation. It lies 350 metres above sea level, on the edge of the Hiraethog Moors. It is the home of otters, dippers, trout and salmon. On the hilltops, overlooking the river, the landscape appears to be empty but that would not be the truth. There are brown hares in the sheep fields. Foxes use the single-track lanes as their own highways. There are raptors and song birds and the occasional shy woodcock. It is a landscape filled with streams, glacial lakes and reservoirs. It is a land overflowing with history. Old farmhouses lie in the bottom of reservoirs, drowned to provide water for the people of the Wirral. Old roads can be seen disappearing into the water. Medieval sheep enclosures make rectangular patterns in the grass and bronze age burial mounds crown hilltops. The weather in Hiraethog can be wild, with winds that shake buildings and bring down trees. Horizontal rain leaves sheep hunched and us miserable and yet there is something about this valley that gets under your skin and gives meaning to the word ‘Hiraeth’ – the Welsh for yearning for home.

Connections is in two parts, the first about the Alun and the second about the Alwen, with both authors contributing to each. One of the attractions for Between Rivers is that one thing the first section does is to memorialise the Valley Works, that strange and extensive site of the former weapons factory which Sarah Lewis has described in her introduction. The frontispiece for this section shows calculations written on a wall in one of the surviving buildings.

And here is a related poem by Sarah Lewis.

Silent Chemist

She’s mixing up sunlight
with carbon dioxide and water,
dispensing oxygen for us to breathe.

She lingers and goldfinches spark up
from teasels, willow-herb flames light
up the places where buildings once stood.

She’s stirring up enzymes in the born-again wood,
dissolving the limbs of willow and ash
to nourish anemones, bluebells and beetles.

Inside a bat-filled ruin, she’s covering
the walls of faded formulae,
silencing the ghosts of war-time chemists.

She’s taking back her valley.

Sarah Lewis also has a contrasting poem, Unstoppable, which gives voice to the Alun river itself. You can hear the poem, with musical accompaniment, here: Stream Unstoppable – a poem by Sarah Lewis. by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud.

The second section deals with the more untamed environment of the Hiraethog moors and the Alwen. Hares run through a number of these poems, as if spirits of the moor. Another of the themes is the drowning of communities to create reservoirs. Here is Diana Sanders’ Llyn Brenig. (‘Llyn’ is the Welsh word for a lake.)

Llyn Brenig

Wind

creates shapes.

Waves curl and swarm

into a walk-on-water heron

which trembles into wood smoke

and a girl skimming stones across

the river. River, hidden under the lake.

Full of memories and dreams and windows.

Bryn Hir, farmhouse, where wood is popping

in the hearth and flames warm chilled fingers.

Winter holds fast and the shepherd curls into his

sheep’s wool bed. He dreams of waves

breaking in through thatch and door.

The land is sighing out an ache.

Hiraeth, home lost to flood,

Valley lane, moss soft.

Tarmac rippled.

Falling into

water.

The second section contains most of the audio tracks. Some feature the unaccompanied spoken word, others have elaborate musical accompaniment for the poems. An example of the latter is Diana Sanders’ Halloween. You can listen to it here: Stream Halloween by Diana Sanders | Listen online for free on SoundCloud.

This is just a taster. Connections is an ambitious project of the kind that David and I hoped to discover when we started out with Between Rivers. There is much in it to see, read and listen to. Here is the complete publication: