David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

CONFEDERATE CEMETERY, ALTON, ILLINOIS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views
 

All of the names of the dead are Celtic

or English. Most of them died – in the prison

near the river –  from typhoid rather than wounds.

Nobody set out to be cruel – farmers’

sons killing farmers’ sons. Their graveyard

above the bluffs was grassed, an obelisk built,

their names cast in bronze, bolted to limestone.

From the highway, there is no signage.

Eagles winter on the  bluffs. America’s heart

is green and fecund: a confluence –

Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi.

 

 

 

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POETRY

VIRTUALLY BIRDLESS IN ASSISI

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read3.1K views
The Dodo, Ustad Mansur, Agra, 1610
The Dodo, Ustad Mansur, Agra, 1610

 

 

 

For Sarah:  always a conservationist, latterly a twitcher.

                                 i

In Umbria – the cuore verde of pristine, wooded hills,

Orvieto’s honey-pale wines,

the paintings of Perugino and Pisano,

the Tiber’s milky jade,

tartufo nero –

they stew thrush.

 

ii

At least once in our suburban garden,

house sparrow, green finch, ring-necked dove, wren,

jay, wood pigeon, robin, starling,  swift,  jackdaw, blue tit,

magpie,  blackbird, sparrowhawk, chaffinch, swallow,

gold crest, bull  finch, great tit, hen harrier, mistle thrush

have, variously, courted, mated, nested, birthed, ate, shat,  killed,

bobbed, waddled, hopped, walked, pecked, fluttered, shrieked,

whistled, warbled, squawked and died.

 

                                iii

But, above all, sang – that esoteric music,

rich and varied as their plumage:

untutored, uncultivated, unstinting.

 

iv

Though only crows circle St. Francis’ basilica,

in Cheshire ostriches are farmed.

How accidents of diet, doctrine, sentiment and flag

determine extinction!

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views
Blondin carrying his manager, Harry Colcord, on a tightrope.
Blondin carrying his manager, Harry Colcord, on a tightrope.

Witness The Great Wallenda, an aging

high wire artiste, who, for his final act,

required technology’s summation –

tv, automobiles, bottles of plasma;

crossed a canyon on cable thin as a wrist;

walked on wire a quarter of a mile

above the earth. He stood, twice, on his head

and the crowds of thousands gasped, then cheered,

the noise muffled in that oh! profound gorge.

 

 

 

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POETRY

PARISH CHURCH, BURFORD

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views

Hear them, silent on the leads,

watching their comrades,

the ensign, the corporal and the private

shot by firing squad

amongst the elms in the graveyard below.

Under the leaves in the summer,

Cromwell’s New Model Army

was practising democracy,

selecting all ranks for exemplary death –

the only leveller.

 

 

 

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POETRY

WE PRISONERS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2.9K views

A lark starting from the heather; a lamb

amazed by a heron; a hare gutted

at a turn in the road; the familiar path

obscured by fern, bramble, convolvulus:

the gallery in my head is open

all hours – by turns, thriving and derelict.

The sparrow in my chest, where my heart lay,

now flings itself at broken panes, now stills.

At the end of the pier, where steamships docked,

black-headed gulls and anglers watch and wait.

The steel-faced laughing man will read our stars.

Under the planking, the jelly fish glide.

My heart is a fist clenched in darkness,

a sea-anemone in coral waters.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LOST

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read3.2K views
Fanny Adams' grave, Alton cemetery, Hampshire
Fanny Adams' grave, Alton cemetery, Hampshire

 

After the fluorescent shops and the snatched music,

the side street was damp and dark –

but a bag of chips and a manipulative adult

made the emptiness freedom.

 

Waterways were trawled and the usual,

time-dishonoured suspects questioned.

Down river, high tides returned her nine year old body.

 

The funeral cortège was a carriage and horses

and the local press was effulgent.

But gossip condemned her single mother,

living in a hostel on benefit.

 

The killer lived two floors down,

an estranged father of daughters –

a violent drunk, unemployed, unschooled.

 

Victim, mother and murderer

threaten the equivocal city.

Losers and losing

challenge its achievements.

 

Death is only one result of murder.

Remember sweet Fanny Adams – mutilated,

immortalised, profaned  unthinkingly!

 

The murder and rape of children

seem beyond words, understanding,  iniquity

– and another’s lack of love or the  means to love

is out of our  grasp, lost beyond finding.

 

 

 

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