POETRY

POETRY

POSTCARDS FROM BABYLON  

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read626 views

Here are postcards from captivity, written

in a childlike hand in Arabic,

Albanian, Igbo, Pashtu, Urdu,

Masalit, Yoruba, French, English…

 

Dear Mr People Smuggler, You lured me

across a dangerous sea with the promise

of Mickey Mouse and all my favourites

on the walls of the detention centre

where I am now. They have been painted over.

PS I know they were here. If I squint

I can just see some of Donald Duck’s beak…

 

Dear King Charles, I know you are an artist.

Please come here and repaint Mickey Mouse

when you have a moment in your busy

opening of flower shows and other things.

Thank you, Your Majesty. PS Someone here

has told me that, though you are Head of State,

you have no power. I cannot believe this.

I know you are a very, very rich man…

 

Dear God, On the television that plays

all day with no sound or subtitles high up

in the empty recreation room,

was a map of this country with dots

and photos of children my age with rickets.

How can this be here? PS Please send Angels

to bring Mickey and the others back to life…

 

 

 

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POETRY

PER ARDUA

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read407 views

First a Lancaster trundled its thunder,

then a Spitfire, in Battle of Britain

livery, looped-the-loop and victory-rolled

above the sunlit bay. On the promenade

many were waving Ukrainian flags.

 

An overweight mother of four – each small child

with her eyes – pushed a pallid young man,

the children’s father, in a wheelchair smoking.

They lived in one room in a defunct, backstreet

B&B, and had come for a free outing.

They stopped for an impromptu,

lingering group hug – but parted suddenly

as the Red Arrows exploded over the town,

their relentless roar filling the bay,

transfixing all of us, cynics and cultists,

with their aeronautical bread and circus.

‘Those who are about to die salute thee.’

 

Out, beyond the bay, one February night,

a family, coming for a better life,

their frail craft swamped by the incoming tide,

were all lost.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

CHANCE INTIMATIONS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read433 views

Rain is crossing the estuary from the west

in impenetrable shrouds of grey.

Not far from the old quay, against dark reeds,

a Great Egret is poised – its whiteness statuesque,

its yellow beak ominously bright in the gloom.

 

As we leave for home in a stygian downpour,

windscreen wipers keeping time, the bird,

which we first saw on the Nile, and now here

near the Irish Sea, is still luminous.

 

How far we have travelled in thirty years –

some of us on wingbeats across seas;

some of us mostly in our heads and hearts!

 

As I write a Wood Pigeon is fluting

in the chimney – its short, sad roundelay

wistful, hinting at at least one more spring.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A SOUVENIR

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read430 views

On one of Mazzaro’s gritty beaches

a cable car below Taormina,

I found a piece of Etna’s lava

the size of a goujon, a sinker,

a bobbin, smoothed only a little

by modest Mediterranean tides;

fetching five euros in the tourist shops but

unseen by the landlords of expensive

loungers and umbrellas, by Russian tourists,

Thai masseuses, Indian peddlers. No doubt

geologists could date it exactly

but I prefer the inexactitudes

of possibilities. Perhaps it was spewed

when the city walls of Catania

diverted the flow into the harbour

or when the Carthaginians were thwarted

from capturing Syracuse, or when Aeneas,

in his wanderings, approached Sicily.

 

Dark grey pumice, heavy, pockmarked like

moon craters, still smelling distantly

of the sea, it rests on a mantelpiece

next to a bit of driftwood slight as balsam,

shaped like a small fish, found on Deganwy beach

by Afon Conwy – stolen goods, contraband,

freighted with histories.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A TOUCH OF SPRING

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read385 views

Driving down Boathouse Lane, Parkgate, at the bend

is the first view of the estuary.

This unseasonal February day, lit

with a spring-like sunshine, the vast reed beds

are golden filled with silver pools and lagoons

high tides have made. On the Welsh shore the narrow,

sea-going channel is pallid – above

Halkyn Mountain is a gentle lilac,

as are the Clwydians beyond, and east

Peckforton and Beeston on the Cheshire Plain.

 

Outside the town the RSPB car park,

on the site of the old sea-water baths,

is overwhelmed with birders – their serious

gear and sharp elbows – here to film or photo

feathered raptors devour water voles

fleeing the rising waters shoreward.

 

Later, putting out the bins in the mild dusk,

all the gardens of our neighbourhood

are filled with the singing of blackbirds.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE COOTS’ NEST

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read340 views

The coots have built their nest among lily pads

on the park’s ornamental pond: too far out

for foxes, too high for water rats;

an aquatic castle keep of twigs,

subtle and elegant engineering.

 

Next time we pass a tiny beak is cracking

the latte-coloured carapace from within.

Instinctively the chick emerges,

shakes itself, teeters down to the water,

swims, returns, squeaking for food, both parents

immediately attendant – with their dark

plumage, the knightly blaze on the long,

horny shield of their beaks, their ancient

English name, named for their call, ‘Cut…cut’.

 

In summer the nest will have become flotsam,

the chick will have matured, the lilies flowered:

as sure as logic, as fugitive as blooms.

 

 

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