POETRY

POETRY

CROSBY BEACH, MERSEYSIDE, 2030

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments2 min read2.3K views


For John Plummer


After lengthy negotiations between

Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council

and Another Place Ltd, the cast iron

statues that comprise the installation,

‘Another Place’, will be removed from the beach.

A third of the statues is completely

submerged. At a high water a third more

disappear, and those, nearest what remains

of the sand dunes, show only their heads.

The hundred figures, all cast from a mould

of the naked body of the artist,

Sir Antony Gormley, will be erected

along the perimeter of a nearby

golf course the Council acquired under

the Global Warming Mitigation Act.

The barnacles, which adhere to the statues,

will in time, it is anticipated, drop off.


A spokesperson for the artist explained

that the protracted negotiations focussed

on which direction the statues would face.

A compromise was reached whereby some would face

south towards Liverpool’s two cathedrals

high up at either end of Hope Street;

some north towards Southport’s hinterland

and the flooded fields of the Fylde’s coastal plain;

and some still westwards towards what used to be

the ambiguous promise of the oceans.


Before the installation of the art work

the beach was seldom visited – unsafe

for swimming, a rudimentary car park

beside the Coastguard Station, no toilets.

The occasional dog-walker might note

the profusion of razor clams, or specks

of coal, scattered among the seaweed, from seams

at Point of Ayr on the distant Welsh coast.

The influx of visitors required

a tarmacked car park and proper toilets –

both frequently inundated now.

The Coastguard Station is on twenty foot piles.


Crosby Beach is seven miles or so

from the centre of Liverpool, most of which

was razed in the May Blitz of ’41.

Much of the rubble was dumped on the beach,

cordoned off from the public throughout the war.

The detritus is so wind-swept and now sea-swept

that it resembles pebbles spring tides have cast –

except for the tell-tale clay of a brick,

a fragment of cut stone.




Note: ANOTHER PLACE – Sylvia Selzer: https://www.sylviaselzer.com/2014/08/17/another-place/

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LAKE URMIA

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

In Old Persian, language of the Shah of Shahs,

Darius the Great, whose inscriptions

extend from Persepolis to Egypt,

and from Romania to Bahrain,

this salt lake, greater than the Dead Sea,

was called Chichast, ‘Glittering’ – sunlight

on the undulating lapidary

of myriads of silver particles.

Urmia – Assyrian Aramaic

for ‘City of Water’ – is high above

the lake on a fertile plateau

of orchards, grape vines, tobacco fields.

The city, a millennium ago,

was diverse, cosmopolitan, tolerant:

Christians, Jews, Muslims; Azeris,

Armenians, Assyrians, Persians, Kurds.

The Christians went first – massacred by the Turks

crossing the border. The Jews left for Israel.


Global warming is turning the lake

into an industrial salt pan the ancients

would have envied. Encrusted pedalos

and stranded diving boards in silent

holiday resort towns around the coast

glare like gargantuan rhinestones.

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

UNDER THE TREES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.5K views

Her Majesty’s Engineers are working hard

with their Polish colleagues to erect

a twenty foot high wall of razor wire

in the Bialowieza Forest –

with its bison, moose, boar, lynx, wolf – the last vast

vestige of Europe’s great afforested plain,

after humankind’s relentless assartment.


This is the forest of the Battle

of Smolensk, the Katyn Massacre,

the Sobibor Extermination Camp.

Jews took refuge among the ancient trees.

Now others are seeking asylum

under the birch and the pine. The wall of wire

threatens all even ‘the fowls of the air’.


Probably before any one of us

had a name, definitely before countries

were imagined, and charts devised, there were

hours, days, weeks of forests of oak and spruce.

The trees lay where they fell. Multitudes

of insects flourished, and saplings grew.

Around the margins scattered people

gathered, hunted, respected everything

even the stones – and watched the brown bears in spring

grazing on the wild garlic under the trees.

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POETRY

THE OLD MEN AT THE LIBRARY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.5K views

There was abundant water from the hills, that once

had been wooded. Under heath and pasture

there were seams of coal and clay deposits

to drive the factory engines and build

the chimneys, which were made by ambitious,

ingenious men for ambitious,

greedy men. The small town became a large town,

and then a city. Tenements were built

for the poor, who had come from hamlets,

at the distant end of tree-lined lanes,

to be less poor. The river, whose source

was in the hills and along whose banks

people had first settled aeons ago,

became, in a decade, an open sewer.


The old men who had become rich because

they owned by chance a lucky piece of land

decided to build a library – leeward

of the prevailing wind – so as to grace

the centre of their famous city.

It would have a Grecian portico

for its entrance, upholstered chairs, and shelves

of mahogany for leather-bound books,

ancient and modern, on all the sciences

and the arts, and the history of the world.


They wondered if a clock were needed –

and then remembered they owned each second.

They had commodified time. What the place lacked

the old men realised – and they were all men,

and only men who owned part of the earth –

was a wind dial so that they might travel home,

after improving their minds, to their mansions

in the foothills, unassailed by acrid

factory smoke and the cloying miasma

from the tenements and the river, but knowing

their fortunes were assured.

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POETRY

DISCONNECTS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.2K views

One Wednesday a NASA rocket was launched

from near Santa Barbara USA.

Its mission was to try to nudge a hapless

asteroid called Dimorphos – debris

from the Big Bang or a useless bit of kit

left on the Great Clockmaker’s untidy

work bench – out of its orbit ten months later.

This multi-million dollar experiment

was to see if humans have the know-how

to stop an asteroid destroying the Earth.


The same day thirty one men, women

and children drowned in the English Channel –

closer to the English coast than the French –

crossing the sea for a better life, seeking

asylum and refuge from havoc, mayhem,

migrating like humans have for epochs,

the want and the need part of our DNA.

Some tweeted, texted, messaged their distress.

Relatives’ grief was broadcast on the news.


What creatures we are! Unwilling to prevent

wars or show minimal kindness to strangers

in extremis, but capable of diverting

a large lump of rock – more than six million miles

away – from the orbit it has followed

since shortly after the beginning of time!

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POETRY

THE COMEDY OF LOVE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.7K views

In our time we have sashayed by the Arno,

we have loitered on the Ponte Vecchio

in our time – as if Beatrice and Dante

were liberated from their fine romance,

their courtly allegory of love,

their dalliance with Mariolatry.

But even in Florence it rains, cascades

down the Basilica and the Uffizi,

darkening terra-cotta, marble, limestone.

Lovers repair to bars for sambucas

each with three coffee beans – the holy

trinity of health, wealth and happiness –

to be lit then snuffed before imbibing,

like brief votive candles.

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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