POETRY

POETRY

A SHORT HISTORY

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

For a generation, like weather cocks,

their skeletons swung near the highway.

James Price and Thomas Brown had robbed the Mail.

Years turned. The Gowy flooded and the heath

flowered. Travellers noted the bones

hanging in chains by the Warrington road.

Justices ordered the gibbet removed,

the remains disposed of. In Price’s skull,

while Napoleon was crossing the Alps

or Telford building bridges or Hegel

defining Historical Necessity

or Goya painting Wellington’s portrait,

a robin made its nest.

 

 

Note: first published on the site April 2009.

 

 

 

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POETRY

EZRA POUND IN VENICE

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

‘But the worst mistake I made was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-semitism.’ Ezra Pound

 

Sitting in a traghetto, Olga Rudge

from Ohio and Ezra Pound from

Idaho – together fifty years,

from concert violinist to poet’s helpmate,

poet maker to fascist propagandist,

he, typically, with stick, wide brimmed hat,

floppy collar, she, wearing woollen gloves,

left hand clutching a large, canvas bag, right hand

a carefully folded scarf, dressed, like any

elderly woman, for a chilly day –

look away separately into the distance.

 

Five years before Pound’s death, Allen Ginsberg,

from New Jersey, on a sort of Grand Tour,

kissed him on the cheek and forgave him,

on behalf of the Jews, for his ‘mistake’.

‘Do you accept my blessing?’ asked Allen.

‘I do’, said Ezra. What closure! What chutzpah!

 

Held in a cage in Pisa, lit day and night,

jeered at as a traitor and a coward

by GIs who had battled from the south,

he wrote: ‘What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross’.

 

 

Note: first published on the site in June 2009.

 

 

 

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POETRY

WISHES

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2.1K views

For Evelyn b. 13.1.10

 

Born to good music by strong women,

Ella’s ‘isle of joy’, Nina’s ’it’s a new dawn’ –

how you nestle in your parents’ untrammelled

love, how you suck with unrelenting hunger!

 

Born into a world of rubble, with children

buried alive, a world of chicanery

and hatreds – you have entered a difficult,

place, little Evie, somewhere remarkable,

full of tears and amazing kindnesses!

 

Born into a world of snow, a fox’s

nocturnal tracks in the white garden

of the tall, Victorian villa, a Black Cap

at the bird feeder, a Red Wing sheltering

in the laurel and, away on the Downs,

boys and girls, freed from school, tobogganing

over the fossils and flints on the steep shore

of a palaeolithic sea – how you squirm

with hunger, how you bask in so much love!

 

Three wishes then for you, little bird:

may you be lucky, may you be gracious,

may you always have someone to love!

 

 

Note: first published on the site in February 2010.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

FAR ABOVE RUBIES

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

The silence woke her. Beyond the locked door

by now her maids should be chattering

in that harsh tongue. She went to the window.

Even the gulls on the battlements were mute.

And no guards on the ramparts, nobody

in the bailey. The straits were the colour

of the emerald at her neck – her father’s

wedding gift. A barque moved edgily

through the sands. Its pennants spoke of home.

The island’s coast was clear in the sun.

She imagined the light summer wind

stirring its fecund, strategic fields.

 

Her door was unlocked, opened and flung wide.

The Prince held a red cloth. “Cover your eyes.”

As she tied the cloth in place, he said,

“’Who can find a virtuous woman?”

He put his hand in the small of her back,

steering her from her chamber into his,

impelling her to the window. She felt

the gentle air from the valley, inhaled

the woods and the river. He pulled the cloth

hard from her head.  Eyes shocked wide in death,

her lover hung from a gibbet. She watched

the body move this way, that way; listened

to the rope creak; turned to her husband.

“Until I die, I shall count the years

I will have loved him as a benison.”

 

 

Note: first published on the site in July 2009.

 

 

 

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POETRY

OH YES THERE IS!

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

You are Princess Ayesha, the principal girl,

in the youth group’s pantomime at St Barnabas,

West Street, Crewe. Disguised as a boy, you are searching

for Aladdin – your true, lost love – in the canvas

forest and the bazaar, among the painted caves

and the amphora. Heavily Max Factored, dressed

in torn shirt and ripped shorts – having crossed the desert,

outwitted each one of the forty thieves, bested

Abanazar, bamboozled the Genie and charmed

Widow Twankey to be downstage centre – you sang

Buddy Holly’s top of the hit parade, ‘Oh Boy!’

 

Your story – we had not met then – though embellished,

of course. But I can see you as clearly as if

we had – in what you say, leave unsaid, and do not

know about yourself: lovely, witty, determined,

courageous, heart breaking. ‘Oh boy, when you’re with me,

Oh boy, the world can see That you, were meant, for me.’

 

 

Note: first published on the site in March 2010.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A POLITICAL EDUCATION

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

The hostel women came one summer evening

after tea. The noise brought Judith and me

from hiding-from-the-Germans, our game

in the bushy borders of the gardens

in our block of flats off Finchley Road.

A crowd of women, with some small children –

a few men were outside on the pavement –

were at the back of the building where we were

forbidden to go and the bins were kept.

A row of aspen saplings, planted

alongside the back fence, was shimmering.

The women were shouting and banging bin lids.

“House us now! House us now! House us now!”

“Look at this!” yelled one of the women.

“This is how the rich live!” She was holding high

a leatherette hand bag. It was my auntie’s.

I felt guilty. She had explained to Nanny,

“It’s worn. The war’s over, mama!”

We heard a police siren drawing near.

One of the men whistled. The bag was flung

into the branches of the nearest tree.

 

Back in the flat, high above everything,

I heard Nanny and Grandpa talking.

The Germans had bombed where the families lived.

I thought of me and Judith hiding,

and wondered if I dared tell about

the bag hung in a tree.

 

 

 

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