David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

WITNESS THIS ARMY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views
Majdanek 1945 Polish civilians and Russian soldiers
Majdanek 1945 Polish civilians and Russian soldiers

During the interval, after act three

of Glinka’s opera, ‘Ivan Susannin’ –

pre-revolution, ‘A Life for the Tzar’ –

Stalin would leave his box at the Bolshoi.

In the fourth act, Ivan, the peasant, lures

the Polish Army out of Smolensk

and into a profound, winter forest.

They are lost. In the last act, they kill him.

Deep in the Katyn woods near Smolensk, pines

darkened the clearing where thousands, thousands

of Polish officers turned to earth.

So many crimes unpunished, dead unnamed.

‘O, Polnische Kamerad, wo sind

der Juden?’ ‘Majdanek, Chelmno, Oswiecim.’

An epoch has the tyrants it preserves,

even for an eggshell.

 

 

 

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POETRY

PREPOSITIONS

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

ON THE PONTE SAN ANGELO

Three roma children

on New Year’s Day kindle a

fire from last year’s leaves.

IN SEVILLE

After rain, a girl

struts her stuff flamenco style:

no one notices.

BY THE A3

Four chestnut horses

flick their tails in the shade of

a horse chestnut tree.

AT KOM OMBO

Crocodiles, Pharaohs,

Romans, French, Turks, British gone:

only tourists, sand.

ON THE SHORTEST DAY

There is only one

theme: in death’s contemplation,

life’s celebration.

 

 

 

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POETRY

GOOD HOPE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read2.5K views
Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA
Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA © Sylvia Selzer 2009

At her back, the South Atlantic’s rolling seas,

those ice blue waters, break, skittering

on the silver sands. Burgeoning with child,

she smiles for the camera, as always

optimistically. Mussels encrust the rock

she leans on, kelp bobs like seals on the foam

and Southern Right Whales blow almost out of sight.

Due west, across the unbroken miles,

is Buenos Aires and the teeming hectares

of the Americas. We turn inland. An ostrich

high steps through proteas and heathers,

a tortoise navigates the undergrowth.

Some flowers bloom only after fire. Good choice

to be here on this cape of storms and wrecks.

She carries so many of our pasts –

refugees and indigenes, blacksmiths

and architects, poets and sea captains…

That first image of the future, of something

commonplace, something extraordinary,

will surface without summons, rise instantly,

engulf her forever.

 

 

 

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POETRY

LOOKING FOR PUFFINS: SOUTH STACK REVISITED – POEM FOR OUR DAUGHTER

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views
South Stack, Ynys Môn, ©Sylvia Selzer 2009

 

Of course, by the time it’s my turn at the ’scope

the bugger’s turned its back. ‘It is a puffin,’

reassures the RSPB girl – and,

since she’s pretty and young, I believe

that what I see is not one of the teeming,

noisy, noisome, nesting guillemots,

razorbills or gulls. A hat trick: ageism,

sexism, anthropomorphism – plus

being churlish as a bear rather than

valiant as a lion. Intriguing opposites. Grrr!

We came here last when she was five or six.

Decades on, she stands with her lover

at a turn in the steps –  both happy,

both blooming with her longed-for future,

and wrestling with the breeze for your camera.


Some gulls have eschewed the crowded cliffs

to nest in the lighthouse’s disused kitchen garden.

We lean on the wall like pig farmers.

There is a dead chick amongst the gooseberries.

A living one stands, yes, surprised, startled but resolute

though even here winds roar like lions or bears.

I hold my breath…1,2,3…for us all.

 

Note: this piece 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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POETRY

AT MYCENAE 1984

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read2.6K views

Behind the lintel of the Lion Gate,

swallows had built their nest. Two Mirage jets,

burning Nato dollars, buzzed the valley.

A sweatstained, overweight American

squatted in the shade of the ashlar ramparts,

fanning himself with a bush hat. “Hey, which

pile of stones is this?” A veteran’s pension

kept him in exile. His mom and dad

had once stood arm-in-arm with that eager,

cropped marine recruit, who was altogether now

someone else. Thanksgiving and each birthday,

he would call collect. “This is the country

to screw up with your folks!”… He lies in the bunker,

smoking a joint. The black sergeant plays Hendrix

on his new Hitachi. From six miles

up the valley, NVA artillery

blow their minds… Parts of his skull were wired

like a broken vase. On the tourist bus,

his compatriots avoided him.

He smelt of despair, was a friend, a son,

brother missing in firefields of tattered

flags. Survivor’s guilt confounds. How he longed

to talk of Khe Sanh, how often spoke of

America! Swallows dipped above him,

under the gate. He did not look at them.

 

Note: this piece 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

A BIT OF A SHAMBLES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read2.5K views

Before Churchill took the railings, evacuees

from Liverpool were lined up by the park

one September Sunday afternoon.

Local residents queued to take their pick.

Innocent days! My widowed Granny

and two spinster aunties – ex-Scousers

(though Toxteth Park not Scottie Road),

the sisters Great War collateral damage –

lined up to do their duty. They couldn’t cope.

The one they chose used the ‘f word’

and wet the bed. They gave her back

– and mentioned her, and what she might

have been, until they died.

 

 

Note: the piece 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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