David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

KRITI

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

Eating olives then calimari and frites,
quaffing a Mythos then sipping a raki –
while watching the swifts and the swallows
swooping over the gently shifting caïques,
listening to the plangent bouzouki
and hearing the cicadas’ percussive song
from bougainvillea, frangipani
and the olive grove behind the taverna –
how to imagine the mountain out of sight
with its summit still so deeply snow-capped
and its echoing cypress slopes patrolled
by eagles and vultures, and its sparse clefts
of rosemary foraged by goats that
nudge the bones of heroes!

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE WAY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

The track ran like a white stream over the heath,
slow between the wide banks of ferns and heathers
with their vivid shades of purples and greens –
and on the horizon the channel shined blue.
Occasional flints glinted. He lay
in a dry runnel. He could hear the bees
labouring about him and, once, a cart
driven, he guessed, to the coast – and, once,
a woman singing some local song,
making her way inland, descending
into the wooded valley where the bear
had been stoned to death. He dreamt of the bear
and the silent mob droving the creature
into the river. He woke suddenly,
shivering. Stars sparkled in a moonless sky.
He rose, stiffly, onto his knees, scanned the heath
for moving shadows, listened for syllables,
warm, soft, heard, saw nothing, knew silence
and stillness and darkness from now would be
where he moved – he who had been hurdy-gurdy,
brazen. He walked quickly to the track
and followed it seawards.

 

 

 

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POETRY

EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read2.1K views

For Alex Cox

‘I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.’ Winston Churchill

As usual, he dresses for town
in anticipation of the King’s summons –
which never comes. After breakfast, he reads
The Times and the Daily Telegraph, notes
Ghandi’s lenient sentence of six years
in prison without hard labour – then,
reflecting on unrest throughout the Empire,
puts on his smock and his homburg and strolls,
cigar lit, the short walk to his studio.
He pours a small portion of Johnny Walker –
the bottle kept always with a clean glass
on the bench he sits on to paint – and adds
a measure of Vichy water. He is working
on a painting of his son reclining
in a deck chair on a terrace in Leghorn.
After the third glass he dreams as usual.

He captures Peter the Painter personally
at the Siege of Sidney Street. Gallipoli
is a famous victory. He leads
his country in war and is returned to power
by an ever so grateful nation. He wakes
and paints in the features of his wayward
son named for his own wayward father.

After the fourth he dreams again. He persuades
the King, at last, to order the razing
of Liverpool as punishment for
the seamen’s strike and the policemen’s strike.
At first light on a soft summer dawn
the dreadnought battleship HMS
Nemesis drops its anchors opposite
Wallasey Town Hall and trains its 15 inch
guns firstly on the Three Graces. He wakes
suddenly as he always does knowing
that, viewing the devastation from the
Avro Bison flying north above
the ruins of West Derby Road, he would see
the few Celts who survived fleeing to where
they had no place, the Lancashire hinterland –
west to the lush, orderly market gardens
of The Fylde and east to the cotton towns,
bustling, regimented. He has a fifth,
lights a cigar and strolls back for lunch.

 

 

Note: the poem was first published by Exterminating Angel Press – http://exterminatingangel.com/eap-the-magazine/exterminate-the-brutes/

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

WATCHING THE LAMBS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.9K views

From the Ackermans’ seat near the lift bridge
on the Llangollen Canal – tree-lined
for the most part but open here – the view
has become a perennial favourite.
We watch cyclists, joggers, walkers pass,
and the narrow boats that have journeyed
from Nantwich, Dudley, Worcester – and we nod and smile.
But best of all in late March/early April
are the lambs on the pasture opposite
that rises, with occasional oaks,
gently to an escarpment that ends
beneath high limestone cliffs that sever the sky.

This part of Wales was once near the South Pole –
and has variously been: deep-sea mud,
crumpled, fractured by the movements of the earth;
a shallow, fertile tropical sea;
a swamp with giant mosses; a vast, hot,
featureless desert inundated by the odd
flash flood; an ice sheet shaping the landscape.
All gone in the shake of a lamb’s tail…

The ewes chop grass as if they were on piece work.
Their offspring thrust at them for milk or stare
at something new or lounge in the sun
or explore the barbed wire edges of our,
oh, so temporary world.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LA PALMA

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments2 min read2K views

For Caroline Reeves

The airport signs are in the four languages
of Spain – Basque, Castilian, Catalan,
Galician – three of which Franco outlawed.
(Our Eroski bag will tell us how to
recycle it in all four). El Caudillo,
slightly chinless, rendered the country
tongue-tied for a generation and more.

We arrive at the same time as the swifts –
which buzz our apartment’s balcony
at sunset and loop across the clay-tiled
roof tops and past the Moorish chimneys
– and the last of the vendavales
blowing round the Gothic cathedral
and the archway to the walled Arab harbour.

Next day, we marvel at the fish stalls
in the market, a Mediterranean
cornucopia – now including salmon!
We stroll along the corniche
by the extensive marina, note
the fishing port reduced to two quays
and the multiple moorings of Russian
oligarchs’ and Arabian despots’
gargantuan yachts and power boats.
We stop in a glass-walled bar for a latte.
Billie Holiday sings, ‘Rocks in my heart.’

Next morning, we stroll in the old town.
We pass a graffito, ‘Passada
a l’rumor! Partit de la Llibertat! ‘–
‘Pass on the rumour! Freedom exists!’
As we enter Plaça de Sant Francesc,
a man is being arrested. Squad cars
flash their blue lights. Nuns watch from the windows
of the convent school by the basilica.
We can hear the excited voices of girls.

That evening, we eat at the Portic
in the Plaça – grilled turbot, aioli
and a small carafe of the house red.
As we return to the apartment
through the narrow, tenemented streets,
swifts chafe the warm air. And it is nothing,
nothing and everything…

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE GARLAND

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

Walking on the towpath of Telford’s canal,
admiring the engineer’s genius,
from the horseshoe shaped weir on the Dee,
which siphons off the mountains’ waters
to fill the channels from here to Hurleston;
remarking the current that combs the grasses
that lie on the bed like Ophelia’s hair;
breathing in the smell of the wild garlic –
a favourite of brown bear and wild boar;
marvelling at its white starbursts, like snow
on the wooded banks below the canal;
passing the holiday narrow boats –
with their tvs and showers and toilets;
we round a curve and see, with the landscape
of river vale, fields and unwalled hills
behind them, three girls laughing and one
with a garland of flowers of wild garlic.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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