POETRY

POETRY

SIDE BY SIDE

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read2.1K views

For you and me, like Henry Moore’s bronze
kings and queens, there is something very
special about sitting together
on a public seat with a majestic view…

***

On the erstwhile Exxon Valdez ride
at the ’90s Epcot Centre, plunging
above Alaska with a dying friend…

Snow falling on Halkyn Mountain over
the estuary from Parkgate promenade
and a fire briefly flaring then dying
by Flint Castle on the distant shore…

A child begging on the corniche at Luxor,
singing, ‘Michael, row the boat ashore,’
and the crowded ferry crossing the Nile…

‘John Williams, Plumber, A Deganwy Lad’,
with a view of Penmaenmawr – Wagnerian,
mauve against the bright sky above Ynys Môn –
the bench washed away in a freak storm…

Beside The Lake in Central Park, early
September before 9/11,
the row boats empty in the humid air…

***

Relaxing on the cruiser at Edfu
with mint tea after a temple visit –
on the road, a camel and donkey
passing in the back of a pick-up…

On the steps of the Community Hall
where Mandela trained to box, next to
a serious queue for a bouncy castle…

Opposite Conwy Castle, the curlews
and the shelduck on the sand banks at low tide –
in the channel along the far bank
a water skier buzzing, buzzing…

Next to the river and the Peter the Great
fantasy statue, in the Monument Park,
with Dzerzhinsky facing his future…

Market Street, Jozi, with the theatre
and bookstalls – and its environs safe
again but at what cost to the homeless
who squatted in the windowless buildings…

***

On the topmost row of the amphitheatre
at Epidaurus, dusk settling among
the olive groves and the tourist buses…

On the beach at Alvor – where Portugal
ceded Mozambique to Frelimo
in a country club – with North Africa
seemingly just beyond the horizon…

In the grounds of the Hector Pieterson
Museum, with the liberated traffic
of Orlando West careering by…

Etna rising in mist from Taormina’s
Giardini Villa Communale
with its avenue of olive trees,
each a memorial to the naval dead…

In Polesdon Lacey’s rose garden,
designed by the playwright Sheridan,
with cattle lowing below the terrace…

***

Ah, to have such promising prospects, the first
of Disneyland, the last of England – somewhere,
looking forward, to imagine the worst,
to speak of the past, to learn to know blessings…

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

PAPER ANGEL

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

A wedding gift from an American friend,
the Thai temple stone rubbing of a sueng player,
a lutist – this one left-handed, flying
with wind blown robes – has travelled with us
from our first bedroom, in a flat, to this
‘music room’ – named for a piano,
a violin, a penny whistle,
a bohran, a family of recorders
and the air-borne musician. Nearly
fifty years have changed the rice paper
from off-white to almost sepia
but the imagined plangent notes steep
the gathered stillness of the room. Pilgrims
make rubbings to have the silence with them
always. Whether copied for faith or trade,
this angel has kept watch.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

BRITISH VALUES

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

Within furlongs of the refinery,
the car show rooms and the retail park
are Viking colonies – for fish and farm
in the rich, marshy land on the south bank
of the estuary, where the river’s
current made a wide, shallow pool before
the mammoths and the sabre-toothed tigers left.
Some of the hamlets are part of the town –
others are down haphazard hedgerow lanes.
Upstream the sugar ships docked, the slavers sailed.
In the town, on the railings of the nascent
mosque erstwhile Wesleyan chapel, beneath
high rise flats, a pig’s head is skewered
a couple of streets from the nearest food bank.
Under the wide arcades of the retail park
women in burqas stroll.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE LEGACY OF THE CLERKS

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read2.1K views

The most senior staff had their offices
at one corner of the building, stacked
one above the other. From their desks,
through one of their three sets of long windows,
they could watch the tidal river’s ebb and flow
and the decline of the salmon. If they stood
at another they could see upstream
to the medieval sandstone bridge – the river
susurrating beneath its arches –
and, beyond, the meadows prone to flooding.

Like most county halls it was an empty
rectangle. Of those with their own offices –
our names and titles plated to the doors
and all, but the most senior, with only
one set of windows – location was all.
A view outwards – even if it were only
the canyon-like yard where the prison vans
debouched – indicated rank. On balance,
we did more good than harm. Things worked:
schools were opened and closed; bridges made safe;
fires attended; streets kept orderly.
We were an embankment to stem havoc.

Though the ubiquitous tea trolley wheeled
through the corridors of power promptly
at 11.00 and 3.00 was a leveller,
my office faced inwards to white tiled walls.
The room had a piece – the last extant, old hands
claimed – of the former Chief Clerk’s carpet:
yellow, sixties, a ‘contemporary’ design
with fussy circles and curlicues
perhaps belying, on the reverse,
the Free Mason’s chessboard. I never looked.

Through my window I could see the tent of sky
criss-crossed by skeins of gulls and flights of pigeons.
I would imagine the heaving waters
from the mountains curbed by the ancient weir
above the bridge – and, on a branch wrenched
in some forgotten storm and caught on the weir,
a cormorant waiting.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ODYSSEUS

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read2.1K views

This is the hardest month. Five days ago
clouds, as big as ships, in a blue sky blew fast
southwards. Next day there was an icy fog
that had silvered the lichen on the copse.
The sun had caught it. As the light rose the fog
dispersed and, through the damaged branches,
a church tower appeared – high, square, gothic.

Three days ago I crossed the motorway.
(I had entered the wrecked services first
to collect bottled water and oat bars).
A jack-knifed artic was still smouldering.
I looked away from the cars, the still figures.

The following day, I took to the canal.
The towpath was clear but the drying bed
was beginning to smell of diesel.

Yesterday, I walked the old toll road
towards the mountains. At first, its emptiness
pleased me. But I heard shouting somewhere close
then an engine catch and die. Last night I dreamt
of sheep high on the sides of the wide valley.

As I scale the last quarter of a mile
to safety, I cross to the narrow stream
falling near me. I dip my fingers.
The water is pristine. I mount the ridge
as snow begins to fall – but there is the lake
and sheep still grazing at its verdant margins.
I hear crows and see their blackness vague now
in the white against the sheer crags – then a blurred
orange. I focus the binoculars.
A climber, neck broken, long hair loose is
swinging in her harness…

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CROW CASTLE

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read2.4K views

Something – among the sparse, medieval ruins
silhouetted against a powder blue sky –
is catching the sun intermittently.
Something, at the top of the steep hill – from here
by the town’s tumultuous rapids
more than a mile away – large enough
to flash in daylight like a lighthouse beacon.
A figure appears then two – small sticks
among the stones – and the light has shifted
from the stark gatehouse to the empty keep.
It shines steady and bright as a prying star –
then sun, wind, whim change and there is nothing.

Perhaps it was a weather balloon fallen
on the crags, forecasting all but its own
demise. We climbed there – we three –
more than thirty years ago and saw
the summer valleys oozing sea green,
the layers and layers of limestone cliffs.
Maybe we will climb it again – with a fourth
and fifth. Who would have predicted the light
twinkling so like a star!

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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