POETRY

POETRY

ONLY ARTIFICE WILL REMAIN

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

When a joiner made the oak frame of this

long sash window, when a builder set it

in the wall, when a glazier puttied

in the panes that keep the weathers in their place,

all I would have seen were hedges, fields, ponds

and grazing dairy cattle – before the rise,

the decline and the fall, in a hundred

and sixty years, of so many empires.

 

When I stand on the back doorstep and search

for the stars amid the urban glare and the overcast

and then look down I see me silhouetted

in the gazebo’s windows – like the figure,

in ‘Las Meninas’, whom we see through

an open door, having paused climbing the stairs

to briefly watch paint capture majesty.

 

I think of Xerses, anticipating

victory over all of Greece, the world,

watching his armies cross the Bosporus

into Europe, suddenly weeping,

knowing that none of them would be alive

a hundred years from then – and longing

for the pillars and for the gardens

of Persepolis. A century or more

later, Alexander the Great will scourge

the city’s entire populace. Only

artifice will remain.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

OF LEAST CONCERN

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

A young wood pigeon, not much more than a

nestling seems, at first, to be sheltering,

from the almost Mediterranean heat,

in the short shadows cast by the pots

of lilies and lavender.  But, closer,

I see it is limping, its left foot damaged.

Seeing me, it hobbles out of sight

into an exotic, Sleeping Beauty-type

border of camellia, crocosmia,

rhododendron. Later, an adult bird

lands, walks the edge of the border,

its head bobbing, then flies away. Next morning,

the young bird lies dead by the side gate.

 

I bury it behind the gazebo

in an undergrowth of ferns and roses

by the back wall, where we have interred –

over forty years – a budgie, a young swift,

a crippled rat, a female hen harrier,

a severed mouse and now the pigeon.

A low body count by any mark.

This time I say, ‘Come, little pigeon,’ as I

load the corpse, which the flies have already found,

on a spade. Someone may discover the sets

of bones, reconstruct the skeletons

and make up a story.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

WAITING FOR THE BUS FARE

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments1 min read1.9K views

The bus, its doors still open, is about

to depart on schedule. A young mother,

with a toddler, is talking loudly

on her mobile in the bus shelter,

telling whoever it is that she lacks

the fare and will wait for whoever it is

to bring it however long it takes.

Should I offer to give her the fare?

How would she react? How it would look?

 

With a pneumatic sigh the doors close.

I turn. She is still on the phone, clutching

the little boy’s arm. And I suddenly

remember – how full old age is of

memories that come like revelations –

rough chalk marks on our modest gate posts

and tramps, caps in hand, at the back door

of the small, thirties rented semi, begging

politely for a ‘cuppa’ and a ‘slice’,

before they had to enter the workhouse,

around the corner, or after they left it,

and my grandmother supervising

her daughters dispensing charity.

 

If I had been able to have asked them why,

seemingly alone in that aspiring,

suburban avenue, they would entertain

such guests, albeit on the back doorstep,

I know they would have answered, in surprise,

‘Why? You give what you should!’

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE ROOFS OF MARRAKECH

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

Were storks here before the Berbers descended

from the hills, creating the ochre city

on the plain and sailing to Iberia –

or did the birds come to build their immense,

intricate nests because there were towers?

 

Flocks of satellite dishes point eastwards.

Beyond the Atlas Mountains, snow covered

deeply now, are the Sahara Desert

and the immemorial routes south to the green

and desperate countries of West Africa.

 

In the nearest mosque, the muezzin

(a youthful, mellifluous tenor)

sings the afternoon prayer – so close it sounds

as if he were beside us. A stork, nesting

on the minaret, opens it wings – its beak

like a prow – and rises surely into

the indifferent sky.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

SURVEILLANCE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views

A police helicopter hovers above

my house, flailing the air, its thrumming

outlawing conversation, even thought.

Perhaps they are observing the druggies, dealers,

who gather round the BT kiosk

by the nearby park, and then scatter,

like the Vietcong, when they hear the rotors.

 

The police will have my scowling mugshot –

as I glare upwards at this wasteful,

pointless, harassing jolly at my expense –

to add to all those other dissenting acts

recorded against my name at NSA

and GCHQ: for example,

supporting the ANC while apartheid ruled,

and now tagging ‘Cuba’, the war on terror’,

‘drones’, ‘Waziristan’ in my posted poems.

 

Why be surprised? If we employ spies,

to justify their pay they will find secrets,

which, by definition, are meant to be

private but which are not, per se, wrong.

While metadata clouds in the outskirts

of Cheltenham – costing so much money,

employing so much talent – thousands

of people, elderly like me but poor,

die each year of hypothermia

unregarded.

 

 

 

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