POETRY

POETRY

THE POKER

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

An upper room, somewhere

in Cambridge, England, 1943.

 

Outside, a rainy night, the Kardomah closed,

long queues at the Alhambra

for Max Miller, the Cheeky Chappie.

 

 

 max-miller-3

 

 

Inside, a roaring fire and a pride of philosophers.

 

Wittgenstein:           The world is everything.

 

ludwig-wiittgenstein

 

 

Russell:                     Man is not a solitary animal.

 

 bertrand-russell

 

Popper:                    History has no meaning.

 

karl-popper-1

 

Zeleznik:                  The world is a fiction of memories.

 

 

untitled                                

 

 

Did Wittgenstein pick up the poker

to emphasise a point?

Or silence Popper?

Did Popper mention the poker

to point a moral paradox?

Or mock Wittgenstein?

Did Russell call one an ‘upstart’,

the other ‘erudite’?

Or admonish them both?

Did Zeleznik arrive with Wittgenstein,

agree with Popper,

and leave with Russell?

Or was he at The Alhambra?

 

Next morning, the skivvy, who had

certainly been at the music hall, removed

the ashes and re-set the fire. The poker

she moved from wherever it was to

wherever she judged it should be –

and chuckled.

 

Woman:                   Is this Cockfosters?

Max:                         No, madam, Miller’s the name!

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POETRY

BESTIARY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views
Ram, The Aberdeen Bestiary
Ram, The Aberdeen Bestiary

 

                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                               i

 

A swan, standing, preening itself obliviously

in the nearside lane of the overpass,

diverts the chance commuters into

storytellers for the day.

 

                               ii

 

One morning, perched on a bird table, a kestrel

was tearing a head.

A pheasant, late in the afternoon, whirred from the terrace

and over the privet.

Earthbound, a hedgehog tripped the security light and waited.

 

                              iii

 

In one late September week, I saw three foxes:

one crossing the car park at Sainbury’s in sunset,

its lean head scanning;

another approaching the motorway across meadowland, loping

securely in wilderness;

the third, dead, and laid, like any dog or cat,

on the trimmed verge.

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POETRY

BULKELEY HOTEL, BEAUMARIS, YNYS MÔN

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read3K views

At twilight from the hills across the Straits, a sudden

drift of smoke – then a fire’s deep orange eye blinked.

We talked of cruising the Nile; of moon rise and sun set,

of the narrow compass of the earth’s curve;

the river pilots’ open armed, hand-on-heart salaams;

and the stars rushing through the night.

 

Later and sleepless in the early hours,

I kept watch at the bedroom window.

The hotel sign lit a faded Union flag,

threadbare at its outer edges.

The only hint of the far shore was

sporadic lights on the A55.

 

But the stars were unequivocal. In a cloudless,

unpolluted sky, how they teemed!

I saw the constellations pass

and the random magnificence of things revealed.

Understandably, you preferred to sleep.

And journey safely through the dark.

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POETRY

DEDHAM VALE REVISITED

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.8K views
Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1802
Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1802
Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1828
Dedham Vale, John Constable, 1828

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September touches the Vale like a sigh,

a mellow, fruitful suspiration

edging from green to lemon, agitating

gently the skieyest leaves. The Stour

meanders to a sea of clouds vanishing

over an unimaginable Europe.

Dedham Church, a testament to wool,

focuses an especial scene: Saxon names,

corn marigolds, skylarks and enclosures.

 

After Napoleon, Peterloo and his wife’s

slow death, another canvas shows the same

landscape. New buildings exploit the river

and the church tower is luminous yet

vulnerable, not focal, to a whorl

of cumulus billowing from beyond

the horizon over dark, distressed elms.

Crouched under the overgrown bank of a lane,

the last you see of the painting, with her tent

and her cooking pot, a tramp woman

nurses a child under the tumbling sky.

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POETRY

EPIPHANIES

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

Citizens falter in the purposeful street.

Above the fumes of money, confusion,

from the leaden gaps of sky comes a murmuring,

a sigh like breathing, pulsing of blood.

Swans are flying on unhurried wing beats,

necks as prows towards horizons. Glinting

like new coins, pedestrians’ faces

turn skyward… The city smells of warm stone.

Sun illuminates the prison’s granite.

Thrust through the bars of a cell window

are a pair of hands, palms upward. Whatever

they have done, those fingers, spread like wings, chill

the indifferent light…

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POETRY

1951

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

Year of austerity’s end when Atlee

and the dying King launched the festive concrete

of the second half of the twentieth

century. That spring, at Uncle George’s

hotel, we had chicken. Labour defeats

tumbled from the wireless in the chintzy

lounge. I read Five Go Off On Holiday

and Biggles In The Orient. I heard

a family playing tennis, laughter

and plimsolls, stared at a girl sunbathing

by the empty pool. I was Julian

taking command, Biggles shooting up Japs,

me thinking of knickers

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