POETRY

POETRY

BILLY GOATS GRUFF

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

After dark, down the steep lanes of the Great Orme –

a two mile long limestone promontory,

named by Norsemen for a dragon’s head –

past the synagogue and the funicular,

avoiding the temptations of the Pier,

into the lamp-lit, locked-down thoroughfare,

came the Kashmiri billy goats, white as snow,

as clouds, as sea spume. Runaways or outcasts

from a flock imported for their wool,

occasional mascots for the Royal Welsh,

those noisome foragers with their prophets’ beards

and trophy horns capered to the churchyard

and its privet hedges, while the nannies

and the kids slept on ledges above the sea.

 

All were indifferent to what was written

in the pages of Ecclesiastes,

left open by chance in the church where no one

worshipped now, on the eagle-shaped lectern

made of brass: ‘But if a man live many years,

and rejoice in them all; yet let him

remember the days of darkness; for they shall

be many. All that cometh is vanity.’

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

APOCALYPSE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

Via Del Corso, Rome, March 2020.

The boutiques had been closed by decree, even

Calvin Klein Underwear and Brooks Brothers.

The only pedestrians were the Pope,

in his white robes, and his bodyguard,

in bulging suits – on a pilgrimage

to the ancient church of San Marcello

set back from the street. Beneath a crucifix,

used to assuage a 15th century plague,

Pope Francis prayed to God to stop the virus.

 

The street, in Roman times, was Via Lata –

Broad Way – and ran through the Field of Mars

towards the Adriatic. At Mardi Gras,

in the Renaissance, the Ghetto was emptied

and the Jews paraded along the street

so that the Christians could mock and scorn.

 

Italy’s churches had been closed by decree –

except in the north where some were being used

as temporary morgues, from which corpses

were taken, for cremation, day and night,

by slow convoys of army lorries.

 

Like riderless horses around a race track,

history repeats and repeats, and God,

who was thought to be dead, may merely be deaf.

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments
POETRY

DANCING ON AIR

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2K views

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.

Meditations In Time Of Civil War, W.B. Yeats

 

There are barricades at both ends of the street.

They have been building for a couple of days –

a skip, a burned-out pick-up, rotten timber.

Someone appears at our door at dusk or dawn,

claiming to be from one side or the other,

begging, asking, demanding contributions –

that folding chair, this old garden bench,

alcohol, books. So far only our region/district

is in turmoil, or in righteousness –

the utilities uninterrupted.

Drones are overhead. We may see ourselves,

and our predicament on the internet.

Our neighbours have gone, deserting their houses.

 

Possibly in time each faction will attempt

to commandeer our house, a salient –

the lead valley in the roof overlooks

one barricade, a side window the other.

Each night, once the little one is sleeping,

we review our long term options: surrender,

or starve. Short term we are optimists.

We read, draw, tell stories, play the piano.

 

A colony of wild bees these last few weeks

has occupied the nesting place in the eaves

starlings abandoned perhaps a decade ago.

With the little one we have studied them,

each day, dancing on air.

 

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
5 Comments
POETRY

SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

Under an April moon the tussocky field

abounds in rabbits. Its hedgerows are sprinkled

with blackthorn blossom creamy in moonlight.

Dark green poplars border the canal

beside the field. Daylight exposes,

behind a hedge, discarded technology:

a wheel-less tractor propped up on breeze blocks.

A troika of Russians on a narrow boat

sings plangently of the motherland.

 

Sudden rain sweeps across the poplars.

It turns to hail on the rusted tractor;

silences the song; shreds white petals;

rolls down a rabbit hole.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

TO SEE A WORLD

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read2K views

For Pat Rogerson

 

‘To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower…’

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE, William Blake

 

From sixteen hundred miles away a friend,

on the southern most edge of Iberia,

with the Maghreb below the horizon,

and all of the South Atlantic beyond,

sends me a photograph of low dunes,

a cobalt sky, and flaxen sands that stretch

almost out of sight – and texts me to say

she imagines the poem I might write there.

 

***

 

Birds call. A flock of gulls or gannets, too far

out at sea to be sure, flies eastwards, where

almost translucent clouds – teased out like skeins

of wool – are high above the Gulf of Cadiz,

and the elusive ruins of Atlantis.

 

Sand seeps from the dunes onto the beach. Each grain

contributes to the golden shore, and waves

relentlessly tug wet sand seawards.

 

What worlds we carry in our skulls, what albums,

what compasses, and dreams!

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
4 Comments
POETRY

UNDER THE PLUM TREE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read1.7K views

Under the plum tree, in the sun, an old man,

reads the last paragraphs of ‘Wuthering Heights’.

‘My walk home was lengthened by a diversion

in the direction of the kirk. When beneath

its walls, I perceived decay had made progress,

even in seven months: many a window

showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates

jutted off here and there, beyond the right line

of the roof, to be gradually worked off

in coming autumn storms.’ From one of the branches

of the tree metal feeders hang with seeds.

The birds are profligate in their habits.

Wild grasses are beginning to sprout beneath.

‘I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones

on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey

and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton’s

only harmonized by the turf and moss

creeping up its foot; Heathcliff ’s still bare.’

Two peacock butterflies have lighted

on the reader’s thick head of grey hair.

He is unaware of the nomads, which perhaps

have wintered in the tree. They flitter off.

All the cities of Eurasia are theirs.

‘I lingered round them, under that benign sky:

watched the moths fluttering among the heath

and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing

through the grass, and wondered how any one

could ever imagine unquiet slumbers

for the sleepers in that quiet earth.’ A blackbird

begins to sing at the top of the tree.

The old reader thinks of a walled garden

in Konigsburg or Venice; and the sun

through the leaded lights of austere libraries,

where bird song is imagined and adored;

and symphonies of tongues applauded quietly.

Blossom falls from the tree onto the page.

He closes the book cautiously, mating

the black finality of the ink

with the petal’s white flesh.

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments