David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

THE GARIBALDI STATUE, VENICE

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

Usually on a geometric plinth,

sometimes ahorse, once like Charlemagne,

here at the end of the wide, tree lined gravelled

Viale Giuseppe Garibaldi

that leads from the Giardini Pubblici,

he stands, as if on an Appenine peak,

with one of his Red Shirts below to one side.

Though probably better known in Britain

for his eponymous biscuit, the hero

of both Italian freedom and unity

faces what had once been a canal

but was made a street in his honour,

the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

The sculptor, Augusto Benvenuti,

was a local lad, a poor boy. Apprenticed

to a wood carver he learned to sculpt.

Though famous enough to be commissioned

to make Richard Wagner’s death mask he died,

in Venice, aged forty-one, destitute.

 

Garibaldi’s nickname was Il Leone,

and the head of a lion is set in the ‘rock’

now festooned in foliage. The monument

is placed in a small, railed, circular garden.

There is a crescent-shaped pool – with two carp, one

water rat, three abandoned terrapin, all

safe in obscurity.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE OUTING

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.6K views

Each Armistice Day, she remembered it.
A walk along the riverbank. Her teacher took them –
one Saturday when the hawthorn was out
and the river slow after weeks of sun –
her and three of the other older girls.
Miss Davies’ young man came too –
in his uniform, on leave from the front.

When they all rested in the shade of a willow,
he unwrapped a large bar of chocolate
slowly, looking away, or pretending to,
across the river.  Suddenly he turned.
‘Voila!’, he said, holding it out to them.
‘Pour vous. From plucky little Belgium.’

Miss Davies and her young man went and sat
at the river’s edge, their heads almost touching.
Two of her friends began whispering – another
pursed her lips and kissed the air. The others giggled.
She lay back – and squinted at the sun through the branches.
‘Look’, said one of the girls. The soldier was pretending
to dip the toe of his boot in the water.
Miss Davies laughed.

On the way back, ‘Listen’, he said, and they stopped.
On the dappled path, blocking their way,
a song thrush was striking a snail on a stone
again and again and again.

 

 

 

Note: This piece was one of the first five poems published on the site when it was launched in April 2009 and has been reposted twice. It has also been published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer

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POETRY

THE ROPE SWING

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.6K views

i.m. Liz Stafford

 

In the crematorium I try to sit,

if I can, where I can see the lawn

sloping up towards the landscaped copse,

and, today, blue sky. I assume the dead,

even if you could, would not begrudge

this longing to be elsewhere, to be free.

 

You have prepared for your death: choosing

the readings, and the hymns any pragmatic

atheist might know, briefing the eulogist

with selected work and leisure anecdotes.

I admire such fortitude, such command.

‘…send not to know for whom the bell tolls…’

 

At the funeral of a neighbour’s son,

among the family anecdotes

was one about a rope swing his dad had made.

The young man when still a very small boy

would swing ever higher from the garden oak

over the wall, the towpath and the canal.

 

I think of that now – pretty sure, like me,

that whatever risks you took were in your head

but were no less vertiginous for that.

 

 

 

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POETRY

AT LOGGERHEADS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

The Afon Alun rises from hidden springs

on the peaty Llandegla moors, and courses

through ruined mill races to this valley

of ash woodland and wych elm, hazel, oak,

of vast limestone cliffs, of redundant lead mines –

a place named for a dispute between two landlords.

Here the river waltzes, tripping over stones,

and its tawny shallows ripple and gurgle.

***

My mother and her two sisters, often

at loggerheads, rhapsodized about this place.

Crosville buses would bring day trippers

to enjoy the gardens, the bandstand

and the Crosville Tea House. In spring, folk

would walk the woods blooming with wild garlic,

bluebells, white wood anemones, celandine.

In summer, they would follow the river,

– dry in places where the flow

goes into sink holes and empty shafts –

to cross the bridge over the Devil’s Gorge.

The valley would be full of sounds – voices

calling, murmuring, distant music

echoing from the ancient, climactic cliffs

almost high enough for eagles to soar.

***

Downstream from the gorge, the Alun turns south east.

It meanders above abandoned coalfields,

and bones of men and boys left where they died.

In landscape shaped by Romans and Normans

it whirls into the Dee.

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POETRY

AUBADE

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

I raise the blind of the small dormer window.

A night of rain has filled the cast iron gutter.

A jackdaw is perched on the rim sipping.

Suddenly the bird lifts off to join

a clattering of jackdaws mobbing

a buzzard. We are two hundred feet

above the littoral – once under sea

but now mostly pastoral land,

the fields a dull gold in the autumn dawn.

The shore is a mile away – but opening

the window brings the waves’ roar like unending

traffic. The buzzard banks, drops – jackdaws disperse.

Far beyond are Snowdonia’s peaks

and passes: mauves, purples; shadows and mists;

endless dry stone walls; glacial memories.

A perfect rainbow forms between us

and the distant mountains – in the gutter

rainwater still as glass.

 

 

 

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POETRY

FEARLESS ARIAS

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

In the gardens of the Premier’s palace

with its white Baroque facade there are

children’s swings and a red roundabout.

The linden trees the old Archduke planted

though leafless are evergreen with outbursts,

festoons of mistletoe, their berries

opalescent in the gentle wintry light.

A dozen or so mistle thrushes graze

amongst the leaf mould and peck in the branches –

but one, perched at the top of a tree, sings

its trilling, boundless, woodwind airs as if all

of the provinces were quiet and listening.

 

*

 

The ancients thought it spoke seven languages.

Clement of Alexandria noted its

‘harlot’s chortle’, Aristotle its

fondness for mistletoe. ‘Sanctus, sanctus’

it calls in the Armony of Byrdes.

‘Stormcock’ some name it – its notes heard above

the roughest, the loudest of weathers.

 

*

 

A scattering of snow begins to fall.

A child’s ball rolls from nowhere amongst the birds,

which rise, their long, white-edged wings flurrying

the flakes, their rattling alarms muffled –

but the one perched on a topmost branch still sings

its fearless arias.

 

 

 

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