POETRY

POETRY

MARIGOLDS, KLIPTOWN, 2003

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2.5K views

The township’s ‘informal settlement’ of shacks –

scores of uniform and unpainted

corrugated iron sheds, some with a strip

of improvised front garden – lay between

a rocky stream prone to flooding and rail tracks

taking those in work to the city.

There were stand pipes and chemical toilets.

There was no mains electricity.

On Friday evenings those who could would hire

fully charged car batteries to see TV.

 

On a flaking, plastered external wall

of one of the few houses left from when

Indian clerks and their families lived there

someone had painted a facsimile

of Sam Nzima’s black and white photograph

of June 16th 1976:

the mortally wounded twelve year old

Hector Pietersen being carried

by Mbuyisa Makhubu – Antoinette,

the boy’s sister, distraught at their side.

 

In one garden marigolds were blooming

like golden stars. A young man approached me.

‘What do you think of our country?’

‘It is full of hope,’ I said. We touched thumbs.

 

 

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POETRY

RELIQUIES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.9K views

The paddock gate is open, the paddock overgrown,

their horses, which have outlived them both,

stabled elsewhere. In the adjacent field

part of a barn’s compacted mud wall collapsed

in heavy rains long before their house was built.

August sun brightens the tumbled yellow earth.

Oak roof beams lean like broken columns.

 

Since I was last here, two years ago or more,

leylandii, planted as a hedge

along the paddock, have trebled in size

in this valley near the Pyrenees.

Their neighbours’ properties and the valley road

are hidden now by the hybrid cypresses.

On the opposite ridge, a buzzard calls

from somewhere in the ancient, pristine woods.

 

Wasps are building a nest under the eaves,

honeysuckle entwines the hibiscus,

and wild grasses sprout on the terrace.

But bees are busy with roses, and inside

all is as it was: their parents’ photos –

on the bookcase where they always were;

the glass cabinet of English crockery,

a wedding present; their riding tack

hanging by the back door.

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POETRY

MIRROR, MIRROR

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.9K views

‘Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?’  Pablo Picasso

 

We have moved our print of Henry Holiday’s

‘Dante and Beatrice’ – bought second hand

fifty years ago – from the window wall

of our eclectic bedroom to above

the bed, where it hangs now in its gilt, ornate,

retro-Victorian frame like an icon.

The bed faces the mantle piece, on which

is a Spanish mirror as large as the room’s

window. Its olive wood frame has flamenco

curves, its top adorned with bridal wreaths

of silk roses and rose buds and ribbons.

 

The morning after the hanging I wake

in expectation of seeing the famed

platonic lovers central in the pier glass,

though knowing they will be on the wrong side

of the Arno, which will be flowing upstream.

However, to my chagrin, this mirror

of long acquaintance is distorted

in its right hand corner like some fairground

feature. The poet and his preoccupied

muse, her forward friend, her hand maiden,

and – though possibly excluding its pigeons –

all of the manufactured magnificence

of Florence seem about to descend into a vortex.

 

Now, where the Holiday originally was,

is a print of Janet Bell’s ‘Low Tide

At Menai Bridge’ – a gift from our daughter

and her family for our fiftieth

wedding anniversary. Bell’s pastel

acrylics have replaced Holiday’s

Pre-Raphaelite oils – his love story

succeeded by her stylised landscape.

If I stand close to the mirror I can see

Janet Bell’s print far over to my left.

At the centre of her painting is Telford’s

suspension bridge – beyond is Snowdonia.

 

Bell’s picture does not show me – why should it? –

that even at low water the sea’s currents

whirl from north and south through the Menai Straits,

that separate the North Wales mainland

from the fecund isle of Anglesey,

and, at the flow, become a gyre, a maelstrom,

nor should Holiday’s tell me that this

particular Beatrice may not have been

Dante’s muse after all, any more than

this mirror with its Iberian

curvatures should declaim in song and dance

its own imperfections.

 

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POETRY

NORTH

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read3.9K views

Flying north west to Reykjavik we kept pace

with the sunset – its reds, its oranges,

its prism of blues – but landed in darkness.

We were coached to our hotel past concrete

apartments, advertisement hoardings,

and neon lit diners that could have been

the outskirts of any large developing town.

 

Iceland has the landmass of Ireland,

the population of Coventry,

most of whom live in Reykjavik –

a calm, civic, prosperous, caring place

with its galleries, museums, libraries,

concert hall, university, and

hot water pumped from the geysers inland.

Nevertheless, surrounded by volcanoes,

we felt close to some northernmost frontier.

 

Its centre has the charm of San Francisco’s

North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39.

We walked downhill to the old harbour

past wooden houses, expensive shops,

elegant graffiti, and steep cross streets.

On the pavement by the public library

was a waterlogged paperback copy

of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.

 

Until the Celts and the Vikings came –

westering exiles, chancers, pilgrims;

seafarers and storytellers; thralls,

nobles, and the odd priest – the only mammal

was the arctic fox, here since the last ice age.

 

We left for the airport in daylight.

The landscape – deforested by all

the mammals except the fox – seemed tundra-like:

the rich, volcanic top soil exposed

against a backdrop of snowy mountains.

 

We flew along the southern coast eastwards.

When the city ends, there is only

the occasional homestead before the ocean

rolls below in sunlight, waters that might break

suddenly with imaginary whales

after we have passed – for we saw none

on our half-day excursion from Reykjavik

out into the North Atlantic’s gunmetal

grey spraying us, pitching us, bucking us.

Our tickets remain valid for future trips

forever until we see at least one

Blue, Humpback, Minke, Orcha or Sperm whale –

an honourable, optimistic deal.

 

 

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POETRY

THE SUMMERHOUSE

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

The gazebo is filled with the leftovers

of summer: six canvas chairs, a furled sun shade,

a striped windbreak and a wooden mallet,

a scattering of fine Welsh seashore sand,

a half full pack of citronella candles –

an optimistic, seasonal jumble

of soft remembrancers, soft echoes…

 

But if the polar ice were to melt –

though Goya’s giants might still club themselves

to death as they sink in a bog, and Borges’

two bald men might brawl still over a comb –

we would be murky seabed here, and this

fair weather kiosk bob to the surface

like the coffin in ‘Moby Dick’, while gulls

swirl above, and the Clwydian Range

become a scattered archipelago

of ferned and heathered islands briefly

darkling with survivors.

 

 

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POETRY

AT THE BRIDGE

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments1 min read2.4K views

When I was poorly my mother read to me

from Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome’:

Then out spoke brave Horatius, the Captain

of the Gate: “To every man upon

this earth, death cometh soon or late; And how

can man die better than facing fearful odds…”

He lived, was gifted land, and made in bronze.

 

But what I remember from those sickly days

is an image of the Captain, sword drawn,

and his two comrades. Behind them,

a second line of defence, they had fired

the only bridge across the Tiber.

Their duty was to stay the baying hordes

charging down the hillside towards them.

I see them now, three figures in a fiery

valley filled with flickering shadows,

waiting for the enemy.

 

 

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