POETRY

POETRY

BUFFALO BILL ON THE ROODEE, CHESTER, 1903

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read2.5K views

And here he is at the head of a line
of his Wild West Circus artistes, Native
Americans in traditional feathers,
sharpshooters and rodeo cowboys,
all ahorse, with a chap in a raincoat
and trilby standing by on the turf
as if calling out ‘Starters’ orders!’
and well dressed spectators
leaning over the parapet of the Roman walls.

The Roodee used to be a tidal pool.
It silted gradually and became
a vast Guild sponsored football pitch until
the injuries and the drunkenness forced
the city fathers to outlaw football
and create a race course, which prospers today
and populates the city each fixture with
extravagantly dressed and largely pacific
inebriates. So, here he is, slaughterer,
impresario, free mason, army scout,
a modern hustler despite his whiskers –
who rode thirty miles, when he was ten,
to warn his anti-slavery father
of a plot to kill him – measure for measure.

 

 

 

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POETRY

CIVIL WARS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.9K views

After the horsemen and the slaves, before
the Stalins and the Hitlers, were the skilful
cities – cosmopolitan, pragmatic,
loud and solemn with towers, spires, domes.

There are some who would reprise a fictive past,
revert from countries of convenience
to imaginary nations, ignore
the corrupting legacy of empire,
the corrupted remittance of colonies,
oil trumping Crusades and martyrdom.

Europe could break like a slate across old
fault lines – a slate smudged with alphabets.
Europe could rub out its history.

There are swastikas in Brick Lane and Berlin,
lampooning in Paris and Soho.
When liberty is assassinated,
freedom is curbed by the rationale
of abhorrence, the politics of outrage –
Jews, Christians, Muslims, the conflicted peoples
of The Book confounded. So, whose Europe?

The cities are filled still with parks and squares.
Storks, pigeons, starlings roost above music
and commerce. After the horsemen and the slaves…

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE BUZZARD IN THE SUN

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.8K views

As we leave the slip road and join the flow
north of cosmopolitan wagons,
discounted coaches, fleet cars and the rare,
pre-twenty-first-century vehicle
like ours, we see a buzzard, on a fence post,
still as a cast in the emollient
winter sun. We have travelled this road
a quarter of a century, know
the remains – a single track railway;
sparse English elms in rigor mortis –
stilled sentinels of clearance and enclosure;
ridges and furrows made by feudal
open fields; a gothic hunting tower…

Later, as always, we see Mow Cop Castle –
a Georgian folly, on a hill to the east –
lit briefly by the sunset’s splendour
and hope we are no more than an hour
from home. Turning west, there are purple skies
brimming with hail. When it falls, we slow.
As the pellets shatter on the roof,
we talk loudly of that bird on a post
in a southerly shire.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ALCHEMY

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

The cherry’s leaves are gilded now, arranged
fan-like on the lawn, by that perennial
alchemy – no intellect invented –
that turns skyward green leaves to falling gold.

Before the season was named ‘the Autumn’,
it was ‘the Harvest’ and then ‘the Fall’.
The Pilgrims took the last across the sea –
where, from bosky Maine to tinder-dry
Arizona, its melancholy sounds.

A male blackbird with its bright yellow beak,
foraging, flicks the leaves hither and
thither as if they were fools’ gold – humans
being humans, birds birds.

 

 

 

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POETRY

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

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

‘I’ve been away,’ she said, as we sipped our wine
at the Philosophy Department’s graduation party.
‘I’ve been ill but I’m better now. I’ll do a masters
on the teleology of the ampersand.’
I nodded. We were both acolytes
of linguistic analysis.
‘Do you know the wild flower,
Rosebay Willow Herb?’
I nodded again, a memory suddenly shaken.
‘The night I was born German bombs
planted its seeds in my brain.’

Next door to my first school was a field full of Fireweed,
in the ruins of a synagogue razed by a Flying Bomb.
I thought of my father in heaven.
As autumn progressed and the power cuts increased
and the flowers died, the teacher read to us
about Tundra and Mammoth and Sabre-toothed Tiger.
I understood that it was long ago or far away
but hoped nevertheless I should be able one day
to brave the snows and kill the beasts.

She was awarded an aegrotat degree
and, some two months later,
sectioned. We lost touch.

 

 

 

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POETRY

SHOAH

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

…and, with the film-maker, he returns
to where he sang, as a boy, in a boat;
a prisoner, an orphan, a Jew dumping sacks of crushed bone in the river;
keeping the Germans entertained with the
Prussian marching songs they had taught him –
and the Poles so charmed that, now he has returned
in middle age, they reminisce fulsomely:
bemused, he turns to camera in such pain…

 

 

 

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