POETRY

POETRY

NASTY, BRUTISH AND SHORT

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

The sun is lowering in the west by the time

I reach the site. Though the hawthorn hedges

are casting long shadows, I can see

the remains of the earth fortifications.

This fortified homestead, a quarter

of a football pitch, was lived in for

six centuries, from the so-called dark

to the so-called middle ages. It was

some ‘continuing city’ for twenty four

generations – from Aneurin’s ‘Y

Goddodin’ to Dante’s ‘La Divina

Commedia’. They kept cattle, grew crops.

gathered shell fish from the shore over the hills.

We do not know why they built here or

why they left. There are no signs of havoc –

massacre or flight – and all their dead

had been buried with due ceremony.

Maybe they had received a better offer –

servitude in return for security.

 

I feel a chill here as twilight settles,

imagining the seemingly constant threat –

and yet… We are wired for fear. Sometimes

I dread – in my centrally heated house

with security lights, fridge and freezer –

the last clutch at the heart.

 

 

 

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POETRY

FROM THE RUINS

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

You are old enough now to remember this.

The overhead power line at the cottage

meant we could not fly the new kite there.

I knew a field five minutes away

with a ruined medieval chapel

and a view down the slope to a bay

where hundreds of souls drowned in a fabled storm.

But we told you of the space and the wind.

 

Your daddy showed you how to fly the kite

while your mummy, grandma and me went

to church! Vestiges of paint remained

though the weathers of centuries had scrubbed

the internal walls of most of the murals.

Through the arches of the chancel window,

we saw you flying your kite: serious,

already skilled by a good teacher.

 

You managed the controls, intuitively

aware of aero dynamics, like

some latter-day Daedalus, as the kite,

mass produced sky blue plastic from China,

bucked and soared in the prevailing westerly.

Rightly oblivious of history,

you were a five year old Benjamin Franklin

looking to steal heaven’s thunder and lightning.

 

 

 

 


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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LEITH HILL PLACE, SURREY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

On this late summer Sunday afternoon

a line of smoke drifts from woodlands below

that seem to stretch almost unbroken

to the South Downs distant, cerulean.

Out of sight is England’s long southern coast.

Dressed limestone forms the house’s facade.

It is imbedded with severed fossils.

 

Through an open window there is music,

a piano. On the lawn are cream teas

and wasps. A buzzard is circling far off.

Josiah Wedgwood retired here, Darwin

visited and Ralph Vaughan Williams composed.

They were related, a Victorian

pantheon – industry, science, art.

 

We cross mowed pastureland to the car park.

A cow frolics away amongst the ferns.

I think of bottle kilns dark in smoke,

and the wet shine of clay revolving,

evolving on a humming, ceaseless wheel,

and, some bright morning, the rising of a lark.

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LOVE IN ITS ELEMENT: YNYS LLANDDWYN…

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.9K views

…is our sort of place – an island only
at spring tides. Sant Dwynwen, patroness
of lovers, was a princess, virgin, nun.
Her true love test required fresh bread crumbs,
a linen kerchief, a well, an eel
– and an optimistic lad and lass.
The saint’s shrine was popular until
the Puritan heave-ho – although, even now,
perhaps, in the earliest of summer’s dawns
or when mists rise or by full moonlight
some lovers will come to find the well.

Beyond the lighthouse, the cormorants and
distant rocks, beyond the edge of Ireland, passed
the Azores and the Sargasso Sea – where
eels breed and die – beyond the far Antilles,
the Atlantic and the Amazon embrace.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LOVELOCKED

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

We first saw them in Taormina
on the railings of the piazza
overlooking the Bay of Naxos;
then on the railings at the Albert Dock
behind the Tate opposite Birkenhead;
and on the steps by the old County Hall
from the Embankment up to Waterloo Bridge.

They are usually small padlocks, some
combination although most are keyed,
the sort used for suitcases or garden sheds,
some with names or initials but most seem
anonymous – though perhaps the weathers
have made them so – some obviously purchased
for the occasion, others found in a drawer.

Does one of them keep the key – or is there
a duplicate so each could unlock
eternity? Maybe they throw the keys
into the air. Environmentalists
and authorities are justly concerned.
There were bridges in Paris imperilled
by the weight! Perhaps, if we were young again,
we would – yet we were never ones to
score our names on wood or stone. Love is private.
Who would have thought that there were so many
narcissists! The lovely lock of hair kept
in a locket has been forsaken.
So, let hard won gold and diamond tell
locked on our ring fingers.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE COMEDY OF LOVE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

In our time we have sashayed by the Arno,
we have loitered on the Ponte Vecchio
in our time, as if Beatrice and Dante
were liberated from their fine romance,
their courtly allegory of love,
their dalliance with Mariolatry.

But even in Florence it rains, cascades
down the Basilica and the Uffizi,
darkening terra-cotta, marble, limestone.
Lovers repair to bars for sambuca,
each with three coffee beans – the holy
trinity of health, wealth and happiness,
to be lit then snuffed before imbibing,
like brief votive candles.

 

 

 

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