David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

LA PLACE DE LA LIBÉRATION, AUCH

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

In the centre of the square is a fountain –

an inspired, aesthetic roundabout –

a contemporary design, the numerous

jets spurting three or four metres from the setts.

On the way to the restaurant, she sees it,

and, of course, fascinated by water

in all its forms, tugs at her reins – but the cars

circulate heedlessly and, anyway,

we are guests. She tantrums.

 

Later, the fountains are turned off, traffic

is forbidden and la jeunesse takes over

with its skate boards and hip hop. By then,

she is asleep in her buggy. A marble

plaque records the one hundred and fourteen

Jewish men, women and children sent

to extermination.

 

 

 

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POETRY

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

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

One early afternoon at the nadir

or the zenith of the so-called Cuban

Missile Crisis – a good or, rather, bad

two years before ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘Fail-Safe’

were screened – I was waiting in the drear

and white-tiled catacombs of Liverpool’s

Central Station – where it always seemed

as if it were night and the blitz still on

and water appeared to drip continuously –

for the next train, under the Mersey,

to Chester, when I heard somewhere beyond me,

somewhere unidentifiable, a loud,

continuing roar like boulders crumbling

or, more likely, city blocks tumbling

onto the streets above and I feared

that either or both the shoe-thumping

Premier and the tanned President

had advanced Armageddon. I believed,

then, rhetoric and realpolitik

were one so the momentary fear was

visceral.

 

The Soviet Empire has been demolished,

the American reduced, not least

its consumption of Havana Cigars,

but Cuba welcomes all tourists, though those

with only U.S. dollars to exchange

are surcharged.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

SLEEPLESS IN WAZIRISTAN

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

The Waziris call them ‘bangana’ (Pashto

for ‘buzzing wasps’) as they drone day and night –

like Doodlebugs in perpetual motion –

endlessly visible, unremittingly

audible, five thousand feet above

the clay-walled villages and towns, the markets

and the farms, the madrassas and the schools,

until some CIA operative,

in a Nevada mountain bunker,

or RAF personnel near Lincoln,

wakes and, after his/her double espresso

and cranberry muffin, identifies

the true enemy and left-clicks the mouse.

 

 

Note: the piece has subsequently been published at http://thirdsundaybc.com/2012/12/

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read2K views

Curtains drawn against late October twilight,

working on verses about burgeoning flocks

of raucous, emerald Ring-necked Parakeets

in the Surrey Hills, I hear the murmur

of girls. It is Halloween. The bell rings.

There is a bevy of neighbours’ daughters –

one with a painted face, all on the cusp

of womanhood – lovely, ingenuous.

 

From habit, I watch them safely down the street

and then, before I shut the door, look up

at the night sky, craning my neck with wonder.

Cloud obscures all but Jupiter, Mars, Venus.

It would be tempting to believe not merely

in physical forces and chemical

reactions but design and purpose

through the kaleidoscope of the universe –

and in the countless stars’ unheard music.

 

After supper, I begin another piece:

about the Ghetto in Golden Prague –

with its learning, its music and its art –

which Hitler decreed should be preserved as

a raree show for ‘Judenrein Europa’.

Daily, new stones are placed on the tomb

of Rabbi Judah Levai ben Bezalel,

Talmudic scholar and Kabbalistic mystic,

legendary creator, from Vltava mud,

of The Golem to scourge the anti-semites,

and battler with Azrael, the angel of death,

to protect his only granddaughter.

 

***

 

In the opposite corner of the room

in which I write is an Edwardian

upright piano, an inanimate

companion since my early childhood.

Our granddaughter asks to be lifted

onto the too high stool and tries the notes,

now loud, now soft,  with the flats of her hands,

hearing with wonder the unending sounds.

 

 

 

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POETRY

PERSEPHONE

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2.1K views

What a work memory is – fecund,

abeyant, arcane!  How apparently

dormant, inconsequential images

awaken, seemingly unbidden!

 

I am fifteen, climbing the steep steps,

two at a time, from the Underground

to the street –  on a sunlit, London

October morning. I look up. Beginning

to descend, carefully, from the gentle light,

is a young woman,  heavily pregnant.

 

She has become a persistent stranger,

replete with promise – unrealised,

as yet and forever.

 

 

 

 


 

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POETRY

SAFELY THROUGH THE DARK

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.5K views

At twilight from the hills across the Straits, a sudden

drift of smoke – then a fire’s deep orange eye blinked.

We talked of cruising the Nile; of moon rise and sun set,

of the narrow compass of the earth’s curve;

the river pilots’ open armed, hand-on-heart salaams;

and the stars rushing through the night.

 

Later and sleepless in the early hours,

I kept watch at the bedroom window.

The hotel sign lit a faded Union flag,

threadbare at its outer edges.

The only hint of the far shore was

sporadic lights on the A55.

 

But the stars were unequivocal. In a cloudless,

unpolluted sky, how they teemed!

I saw the constellations pass

and the random magnificence of things revealed.

Understandably, you preferred to sleep.

And journey safely through the dark.

 

 

Note: The poem was originally published on the site in October 2009, under the title, BULKELEY HOTEL, BEAUMARIS, YNYS MÔN –  https://davidselzer.com/2009/10/

 

 

 

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