David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

THE OUTING

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.9K views

Each Armistice Day, she remembered it.
A walk along the riverbank. Her teacher took them –
one Saturday when the hawthorn was out
and the river slow after weeks of sun –
her and three of the other older girls.
Miss Davies’ young man came too –
in his uniform, on leave from the front.

When they all rested in the shade of a willow,
he unwrapped a large bar of chocolate
slowly, looking away, or pretending to,
across the river.  Suddenly he turned.
‘Voila!’, he said, holding it out to them.
‘Pour vous. From plucky little Belgium.’

Miss Davies and her young man went and sat
at the river’s edge, their heads almost touching.
Two of her friends began whispering – another
pursed her lips and kissed the air. The others giggled.
She lay back – and squinted at the sun through the branches.
‘Look’, said one of the girls. The soldier was pretending
to dip the toe of his boot in the water.
Miss Davies laughed.

On the way back, ‘Listen’, he said, and they stopped.
On the dappled path, blocking their way,
a song thrush was striking a snail on a stone
again and again and again.

 

 

Note: the poem was one of the first pieces to be published on the site in April 2009  and has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer

 

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE ABATTOIR AT MAZINGARBE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views
The Last Absolution of the Munsters at Rue Du Bois, by Fortunino Mattania, depicts an event which took place on 8th May 1915, near Neuve Chapelle.


The push for Aubers Ridge had been postponed

because of rain. But the Saturday

was dry and sunny. Going up the line

in the early evening, the battalion

stood easy at the shrine to Our Lady.

‘…in remissionem peccatorum…’

By noon, next day, nearly half were dead,

caught on the German wire Haig’s ill equipped

artillery had, once more, failed to cut.

 

In Mazingarbe, an industrial town

ten miles south, the British commandeered

the abattoir. The first to be shot at dawn

was a Munster regular from Cork.

‘…in nomine Patris…’

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on the site in November 2012.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

PIPER LAIDLAW OF LOOS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

The Allies were waiting to go over the top

to attack a weak enemy position.

The British used gas for the first time.

Unfortunately, after a half an hour,

the wind changed and it all blew back

over the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Unsurprisingly, the men were distressed.

Lieutenant Young called out, “Pipe them together,

Laidlaw, for God’s sake, pipe them together.”

And the forty year old veteran climbed

the ladder, tuned his pipes and marched back and fore

along the parapet, playing first

‘The Blue Bonnets O’er The Border’ – about

Bonnie Prince Charlie’s invasion of England –

and then ‘The Standard On The Braes O’Mar’ –

about the raising of the Jacobite flag.

He marched until shrapnel in his leg downed him

then, sitting, played on. And the laddies were

‘piped together’ and went over the top.

They were almost immediately

in enfilade from the German gunners

in an abandoned factory. Nothing

was achieved. No ground was gained or lost.

Piper Laidlaw VC died nearly eighty

and was buried in an unmarked grave.

 

This almanac of ironies is truly

beyond satire for something in this story –

and the paintings, photographs, footage

of other Pipe Majors playing the pibroch

on other parapets, in No-Man’s-Land –

moves to tears not laughter: certainly

the music – the chanter and the drone –

the selflessness, of course, and, perhaps,

the conviction that their history

and their traditions would transcend misfortune.

 

 

 

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POETRY

JULY…

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

the month we found, beyond the rose of sharon,

past the mint and the sage, in the sunless

corner by broken pots and upturned

zinc buckets, the first wild strawberry…

 

when we walked up the Acropolis,

with feral dogs among the olive trees…

 

when we walked through Carnac’s standing stones

and heard the wind shake the fields of wheat…

 

when we decorated our first home,

with Chris Montez, ‘The more I see you’…

 

the month we met on a date blind like Cupid

or Justice – between the end of schooldays

and the rest of our lives…

 

 

 

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POETRY

SEA AIRS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.6K views

It’s good, at times, to have grown old, though not

to ‘wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled’

but to be allowed to sit upon a fold up

picnic chair beneath a beach umbrella

and read – something, as a stilted youth,

I would have paid for if I’d had the dosh.

 

Now, between paragraphs, I watch, across

a quarter of a mile of sand, the family

paddle and swim. Suddenly, behind me,

the Christian Beach Team strikes up,

calling boys and girls and dads and mums

for an Adam and Eve tug o’war –

accompanied by much loud hailer cheer

and jovial misogyny – and then

a brief sermon followed by a hymn – ‘Floods

of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll,

Since Jesus came into my heart!’ – and I

begin to hear the waves’ far siren song

then note the family is returning

from the water’s edge as quickly as they can

and fear the little one has cut her toe

on a razor shell or been stung by

a lion’s mane jellyfish. But, no,

they have seen a dolphin – that Christian

symbol of amity and charity –

arching and diving, tearing through the waves,

finally heading out into the bay.

Now they’ve brought the good news to Grandpa

they go back, the little one running.

 

The Beach Team begins again – ‘Hear us, O Lord…’

– but I can only hear ‘mermaids singing,

each to each’ and can only imagine

the dolphin, that paragon, that non pareil

of the air, of the sea.

 

 

 

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POETRY

CASTLE PLAYGROUND, BEAUMARIS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.7K views

I think of those we love the most, recall

their playing here four decades apart –

as she and I sit at a picnic table

to finish her ice cream then rehearse

our vaudeville act. ‘I say, I say, I say,’

she declares, with barely a lisp or

hesitation, ‘my dog has no nose!’

‘Your dog has no nose! How does he smell?’ I ask.

‘Terrible!’ she says, and runs to the swings.

 

She can swing herself now, pushing against

the air, holding the chains just as she should –

as her mother did – beneath this unfinished

curtain wall built from local grit stone.

Determined to be free, she must go ever

higher – because we will catch her or because

the future seems always distant and safe.

 

I stand behind her – ready to push or catch –

and see the embracing, soothing horizon

of abiding mountains and perpetual sea.

This little one, as yet focussed on each

intensive, encyclopaedic moment,

sees only her splendid new trainers, feels

only the pendulum of blood in her veins.

‘Stop now,’ she calls and, once free, runs across

the putting green to the bouncy castle.

 

 

 

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