David Selzer

1085 posts

POETRY

MADAGASCAR

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

Like Iceland, New Zealand, and the isles

of the South Atlantic, Madagascar

for most of its ninety million years or so

had been untouched by homo sapiens –

until we carved out logs, invented paddles,

outriggers, sails, and learned to read sun and winds.

 

Almost as soon as the first sailors

had come ashore the forests were slashed

and set alight, the flightless Elephant Bird

and the Giant Lemur were extinguished.

 

***

 

The damp air of New Year’s morning is heavy

with the spent gunpowder of last night’s fireworks,

and the cloying smoke of wood-burning stoves,

so we are going to the Zoo to see

the lemurs in their new enclosure,

where we hominids may walk amongst them

as if through the dense forests of their island.

 

The Zoo conserves five of the hundred species

of lemur, the world’s oldest primate,

and peculiar to Madagascar.

Larger than cats, surer than squirrels

two Red Ruffed Lemurs have leapt to the top

of the tallest tree in the enclosure –

and are calling loudly to each other,

aggressively it seems to us viewers below.

Perhaps some ancient memory impelled them

to the canopy’s highest point so that they

might see their green and pristine land, but instead

found only scorched plains of felled baobobs

and the red earth haemorrhaging into the sea

under a poisoned sky.

 

 

 

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POETRY

AFTER THE PANTOMIME

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2.6K views

When all of the evils are back in their box,

and those who can have been paired in marriage –

to an ovation from an audience

of boy scouts, elderly innocents,

and coach parties from Rhyl and Wallasey –

we emerge into Theatr Clwyd’s bar.

We watch, in awe, through the long glass window,

a vestigial sunset above Moel Famau –

variegated layers of coral

beneath a looming indigo bank of cloud.

Below – in the darkening river valley

of ribbons of homes, old mine shafts, quarries,

used car dealerships, and the Alyn’s waters

out of sight over glacial stones –

a billow of smoke, snaking round houses

at the edge of Mold and onto the hillside,

is rising white as steam.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ALMA MATER

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read2.9K views

When Queen Elizabeth died I remembered

that my uncle Tom died the same month

as her father, King George. Both were veterans

of the First World War – one of the Battle

of Ypres, one of the Battle of Jutland.

Both private and prince were heavy smokers

till near the end – roll ups, Benson & Hedges.

 

Tom was gassed at Ypres. After the war

he became a pastry chef until

the Depression. Later, during the next

World War and subsequently, he made

packing cases in an aircraft factory.

Children take for granted the adults

around them. Later we avoid unpicking

memories – so it had not occurred to me

until now that Tom appeared to have no friends,

no interests, or possessions, or

to wonder why. And, of course,

there is no one alive left to ask.

 

After his death, I was moved into his small,

impersonal bedroom above the hall –

in our 1920s rented, pebble-dashed,

three bedroom semi with a privet hedge.

When Tom was alive six of us lived there.

The five who remained were me, my mother,

her older sisters, and my grandmother;

an only child, two widows, and two spinsters;

four formative women, who are still vivid in my heart.

But Uncle Tom evades me. Perhaps

he had shut down his life some time before.

 

I lived there from age five to sixteen.

Though death and loss and regret were near

neighbours, and my granny and her daughters

talked mostly about the past – making me

both risk-averse and ambitious –   it was not

a cheerless place. It was a house with books;

an upright piano, which I learned to play,

and for which I had a ready audience;

and a number of pictures – including

a print of Somerscales’ ‘Off Valparaiso’

on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

So we all passed it at least twice a day.

 

Tom would have looked at it, presumably,

though perhaps he was always too fatigued

in his fifties then from physical work

with lungs damaged in youth by the mustard gas.

Whether I actually did or not, memory

tells me I would stop and study the print.

Someone must have told me Valparaiso

is a port on South America’s west coast,

and the ship featured in the picture

must have been heading for the harbour,

since a pilot boat is waiting for it,

which the ship acknowledges but refuses.

The three masted barque, from beyond Cape Horn

and the Southern Ocean, into the azure

Pacific seas, is steering almost

towards us, the wind in its sails – an image

of grace and purpose, of power, and of risk.

 

 

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POETRY

SNOWDROPS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read2K views

In a weathered flower pot, its dark green glaze

inscribed with abstractions, are four snowdrops,

carefully planted like the four points

of a weather vane, their blooms, as yet

still tight, unopened, like paper lanterns

on long curving poles – as if in the lush heat

and humidity of some miniature,

ornamental, oriental garden

replete with palm fronds, and liana,

and distant gongs. In an easterly wind –

that has been blowing for days from the tundras

of Siberia, over the vast lowlands

of the European Plain, and the grim

North Sea, across the moorlands of the Peaks,

and the clayey fields of the Cheshire Gap –

they are trembling slightly.

 

 

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POETRY

STILL LIVES

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read2.2K views

The painter, Giorgio Morandi – who lived

most of his seventy four years at

39 Via Fondazza, Bologna,

in a second floor apartment with his three

sisters, in the medaeval soul and heart

of La Grassa, with its imposing towers,

its red tiles, narrow streets, and arcades –

specialised in Natura Morta, Still Life.

 

The apartment and the Renaissance building

it houses have become a museum,

preserving his studio, and his props:

glazed ceramic vases, bottles, bowls, jars,

pitchers, kitchen utensils, and table cloths,

which appeared many times re-arranged,

in ochres, browns, greys, with their shadows falling

variously on a neutral background –

through two world wars, Mussolini’s rise and fall,

and mass migration to the industrial

north from all parts of the Mezzogiorno.

 

I have come to acknowledge Morandi’s

almost compulsive, obsessive focus

on the same small number of objects

in different conjunctions, depicted

with the same limited, disciplined palette,

the same minimalist and easily

adaptable format, capturing how,

at any given moment, things might have seemed.

 

There are no self-portraits, or depictions

of his sisters, or his dog, Pluto.

There are posed photos of him – serious,

in horn rimmed glasses, jacket and tie,

and always about to light up a Muratti.

 

Since he preferred “tranquillità e pace”

what would he have made of Via Fondazza

now it has become a ‘Social Street’?

One of its residents, to “combat urban

loneliness”, set up a private Facebook page.

Neighbours can put a name to a face,

and greet each other confidently in

the Osteria Della Fondazza or

Morandi Frutta Di Masood Maryam.

 

Maybe one of his neighbours would ring the bell

at 39 to present him with

a favourite jug or carafe to be

immortalised. Perhaps the oldest sister

would go down to the building’s main entrance,

open one of the double doors, and say

something ambiguous, enigmatic,

emollient, thus leaving the supplicant

not without hope.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE YEAR’S MIDNIGHT

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.7K views

Though only on the edge of the long darkness

of the north, the days, as they always do,

had shortened here to barely six hours

of daylight. The next day, imperceptibly,

the light began to change, to lengthen.

 

…as if on the bridge of some vast ship

the command were given to turn the wheel

scarcely a degree, and sail the vessel sunward,

the rigging taut with southerly airs,

storm petrels following in the ship’s long wake…

 

For a week now a pair of blackbirds

has visited the terrace each morning,

in the best of light, to dart and peck

for insects. Each year the weather warms.

Each year the nesting begins earlier.

 

…as if two lovers shared the same dream –

a garden of lemon trees and apricots,

of music and poetry and fountains,

where their companionship might prosper – but woke

to find themselves in a windswept boneyard…

 

Although the physics of this mystery, this

near miracle should last, the biology

may not – the sun will still probably shine

in a world without birds and nests and eggs,

and the silent earth spin.

 

 

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