POETRY

POETRY

REASONS OF STATE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read294 views

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which lasted

twenty-nine days, was, in effect, ignored

by the Polish Home Army – the country’s

Resistance movement – presumably for

reasons of state. Unhindered, the SS

ensured that the Ghetto was ‘Jew clean’

for the Fuhrer’s birthday. The following year,

during the Warsaw Uprising, which lasted

sixty-three days, the Polish Home Army

was ignored by the Soviet Army,

which halted its advance – definitely

for reasons of state – east of the Vistula

until the Resistance had been defeated.

Josef Stalin, silent anti-Semite,

wanted Poland cleansed of all nationalists

including his fellow Jew haters.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

FOR WANT OF A TEN DOLLAR BILL

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read225 views

Fidel Castro attended the prestigious

Jesuit-run Colegio Dolores

in Santiago, Cuba. When he was twelve

he wrote a letter of congratulation

to President Roosevelt on his landslide

re-election – ‘My good friend Roosevelt’.

He asked for a ten-dollar bill – not to spend

but because he had never seen one –

and he offered to show Roosevelt

the iron mines at Mayari for his ‘sheaps’

(crossed out and replaced with ‘ships’). The White House

acknowledged the letter but did not enclose

a ten-dollar bill, and made no mention

of the mines. ‘Los americanos son

unos imbéciles’, he told a friend.

 

In 1959 when the USA

was not unsympathetic towards

what it saw as liberal nationalists

attempting to oust the embarrassing

Batista and his Mafia buddies,

Castro led a Cuban delegation

to Washington to seek support and not –

he was emphatic – money. Eisenhower

chose to play golf that day, and left his VP,

Richard Nixon, in charge. Trickie Dickie,

in effect, gave the Cubans a telling off.

Fidel Castro was enraged, perhaps, in part,

having been reminded of those childhood

humiliations of nineteen years before.

And the rest… as they say.

 

 

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POETRY

BEFORE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read224 views

Remember – before the Catastrophe, the

Ruin, the Shoah – that there were millions

in the shtetls in what is now Belarus,

Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,

Moldova, Poland, Romania,

Russia and Ukraine; small market towns, part

of the lost continent of Yiddishland;

with its piety, and its superstition;

its wit, graft, poverty, and frequent terrors;

its klezmer bands, and its dancing circles;

winter’s whirling snowdrifts, summer’s gnats,

across the goyim’s steppes and in their forests,

before the Ruin, the Catastrophe;

juddering images, still, flickering.

There is an old Yiddisher aphorism:

‘Di ganste velt iz eyn shtetl’ – ‘The

whole world is a small town’.

 

 

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POETRY

IN THE LONG AGO

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read264 views

A week to the day before 9/11

we were sitting on the open top deck

of a Lower Manhattan tour bus.

We passed many places to conjure with,

like the New York Criminal Court with its

classical portico supported by

nine Corinthian columns. On its steps

the last scene of TWELVE ANGRY MEN was filmed,

Sidney Lumet’s unmatched movie about

bigotry, justice, and being human.

But, because of the so-called War on Terror,

the most vivid memory of that tour

is the bronze globe turning in the fountain

in the World Trade Centre’s busy plaza.

 

We were staying with a friend on Long Island –

in Jamaica Estates, Queens. In those days

we got our news from The Guardian, which

was not available in the local

Key Food Store! – so we missed news about

the first World Conference Against Racism

then being held in Durban, South Africa.

Inevitably the Global North

and the Global South fell out about

agenda items regarding reparations

for Atlantic Slavery and whether

Zionism is a racist concept.

9/11 sidelined the outrage, that

act of terror which was used to fortify

the dominion of the North. To be human,

it seems, is to choose: be selfish or just.

 

 

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POETRY

AND THE STARS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read383 views

One of the few survivors of the attack

on a Gaza City refuge – that had once

been a school – is a five-year-old girl,

who walks alone through the burning building.

Her name is Waad. Most of her family

have perished, including her mother.

Traumatised she speaks softly: ‘I love Mama

as big as the sky and the earth – and the stars.’

She is surrounded by concrete rubble,

domestic detritus, and the unfound dead.

 

An hour or so’s drive away, a horde of

well-fed men is striding through the narrow streets

of old Jerusalem chanting ‘Death

to the Arabs!’ Though the Arabic

and Hebrew for ‘death’ and ‘love’ have the same

Semitic roots, the child and the chanting mob

seem galaxies apart.

 

 

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POETRY

MERELY PLAYERS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read289 views

John Clare – the celebrity bard, the ‘peasant

poet’;’drunkard’; ‘madman’; as famous

in his time as Keats – acquired many loyal

and enthusiastic patrons, among them

Bishop Marsh of Peterborough and his wife.

He sometimes stayed in the medieval palace.

On one occasion, Mrs Marsh took Clare

to see a performance by a touring

theatre company, whose repertoire

comprised French melodramas and Shakespeare’s plays.

The production that night was THE MERCHANT

OF VENICE. Clare sat through the first three acts –

in the box reserved for the Lord Bishop’s wife –

totally engrossed in the words and the actions,

oblivious of Mrs Marsh’s asking him

if he were enjoying the play. At the start

of the fourth act – set in a Venetian court –

he became agitated, and, at the point

where Shylock does not give the ‘gentle answer’

hoped for, Clare stood, shouting, “You villain,

you murderous villain!” – and leaped from the box

onto the stage. A couple of the more burly

actors prevented his reaching Shylock,

and strong armed him, with difficulty,

back into the box. As Mrs Marsh

tried to soothe the distracted poet,

the play was abandoned.

 

 

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