Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
She was nearly deaf apparently and nearly blind
and ‘mentally deficient’ since infancy –
but could see an old friend to wave
and sound a greeting.
She was definitely Thurberesque
with her wall-eyed look and stolid gait.
She felt pain and wept.
O prisoner, love alone could not release you!
By David Selzer‘My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.’
Meditations In Time Of Civil War, W.B. Yeats
Each year, there would be two nests –
in the eaves at opposite corners
of our square house. We would hear them,
scratching in the gutters – and Danny,
the window cleaner, an ‘affable irregular’
of the black economy, at the door for his money,
would report on their progress
through the spring and the summer –
and remark on the bees floating in the rhododendron
by the porch. “They’re light with honey,” he would say,
“light with honey.”
This year, though there are still bees, for the first year in nearly
forty years there is an absence of starlings,
not a one. I remember long dead, street-wise, innocent Danny,
who liked his drink, and whose ladders were stolen
twice. I remember the teeming, imperious,
cacophonous roosts of starlings that choired
the big city nights, high in the dark.
I think of the well-lit streets – greedy,
internecine.
By David SelzerAn old man, wrists like a boy’s, round and round
the footpaths of the park, wheeled his wife
swaddled in many fading coats. She was blind,
made a gummy music that might have been hymns.
A child, passing, did not know when to laugh,
nor I, a young man then, how to deserve
such rapture.
By David SelzerThis is the first church she has ever entered.
She likes the thudding noise of her pink trainers
with the flashing heels on the limestone flags.
She stops and points. She has seen, in subtle,
Renaissance stained glass, Jonah emerging
from his whale. She sees a kneeler, lies down
before Adam and Eve and pretends to sleep.
The cathedral was on the pilgrim route
to Santiago Di Compostella
so is a place of consummate skill,
vaulting beauty and Christian arcana –
a wonder no greater or lesser
than Iggle Piggle or The Gruffalo.
Keep the faith, little one, keep the faith!
By David Selzer‘Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound…and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.’ Leviticus 25:9 & 25.10
Much of the chapters and footnotes of England’s,
though not Britain’s, history are scribed here
in stone and iron – Roman Walls, Norman weir,
marshalling yards – the rest is on paper,
of course, and from hearsay. It is said,
for example, for Victoria’s Jubilee,
in our street, lilac trees were planted.
Some have survived changes of taste or neglect.
This city, where I have lived most of my life
by chance then choosing, is shaped by the Dee,
that brought wine and the Black Death from Acquitaine,
powered the long defunct tobacco mills and still
draws occasional salmon from the oceans.
I imagine them waiting in the deep currents,
fattening on sand eels, squid, shrimp, herring,
and then the long, fasting haul from west
of Ireland, homing for their breeding grounds.
A cormorant perches on the salmon steps.
The last of the fishermen is long dead.
Like the calls and wings of Black-headed Gulls,
blown by April storms, the names and titles
of princes echo from the neutral sky
and sound through the deferential streets.
No doubt, there will be the splendid nonsense –
the cathedral’s ring of bells will peel
and the Lord God Almighty will be urged
repeatedly to ‘save the Queen’. So,
let the ram’s horn blow like a trumpet
through Mammon’s and God’s obsequious temples –
and ‘…proclaim liberty throughout all the land…’
Almost which ever road you take westward,
in the distance, are the Welsh hills. The Legions
exiled the Celts from here – Saxons et al,
with legal threats and occasional killings,
kept them out except for trade and prayer
but forbade their songs. Now, waiting, we
are everywhere. Let the ram’s horn sound.
By David Selzer
He’s set it up, of course. Or, rather, framed it.
There’d be no feigning this young woman’s delight
in being ‘free and easy’ and doing
‘as you darn well pleasy’. She’s got her best blouse on,
with shoulder puffs, her sister’s shoes, which fit her now,
black ankle socks and shoulder length, unpermed hair
freshly washed – and waved, probably with Kirby grips.
Doin’ the walk, she lifts the hem of her skirt,
revealing her slip – and smiles coquettishly.
Beside her is a line, a queue almost of
female acolytes. (The only boy looks away).
They’re pre-pubescent, excited, nervous at what they see:
grown up clothes, shapely legs, unimaginable bust,
a sensuousness that, unwilled, will be theirs.
Down the street of terraced houses, symmetrical
as barracks, a woman strides, her back turned
on this miracle: a girl who knows
she will never grow old – ‘Any ev’ning,
any day…Doin’ the Lambeth Walk.’ Oi!
By David Selzer
