POETRY

POETRY

THE GULLS OF VENICE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

‘Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life’.

THE STONES OF VENICE John Ruskin

 

Many things are forbidden in Venice:

sitting on the steps in St Mark’s Square;

hailing water taxis from water bus pontoons;

putting out food waste except on the hook

provided between the designated hours

in order to deter gabbiani;

of which there are two species, compatriots,

the black-headed gull and the herring gull,

comune and reale respectively,

‘common’ and ‘royal’ surprisingly,

perched opportunely on bricole,

the stout oak posts that have always marked

the lagoon’s few navigable channels,

or raucous overhead, out of sight, a

remembrance of home, above the still canals,

the silent alleyways.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE LAGOON

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

Like most houses over centuries here

this one has been divided. What was its

courtyard is part of a private gallery.

A vine, planted in the yard – perhaps

in the island’s original earth before

alder pilings made the city’s foundations –

has thickened, grown on top of a wall,

almost hiding the broken bottles

embedded in cement, and then up

to our third floor balcony, covering

the pergola. The grapes are pearly, small, sweet.

 

There is no dulling roar to baffle sounds.

Two unseen neighbours greet each other

in the street below. We hear ‘acqua alta’.

Later from the courtyard comes the noise

of prosecco, and earnest chatter.

Distantly a vaporetto changes gear

as it docks. Cases are wheeled through the calle.

On time San Samuele’s single bell

and San Stefano’s leaning campanile

ring out, then fade. The expected storm breaks

with thunder – and drops tap on the leaves.

 

Lightning wakes me. Out of sight, far beyond

the limits of houses and paving stones,

hundreds of thousands of birds are shuffling

through salt marsh, on mud flats, in tidal shallows,

their cries and calls unheard.

 

 

 

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POETRY

A WINNING HAND

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.8K views

We met on the first working day of the week;

married, five years later, on a Saturday;

and sailed for Ireland on the Sunday.

This Monday marks fifty two years of mostly

wedded bliss; occasional toilsome woe;

loving; giving; hard work; grace – a pack of cards

without, for the most part, the jangling jokers.

 

Out of the grassy plains, along the Silk Road

from Samarkand, came the colours of

anarchy, of power and passion; came

the four corners of the world, its seasons,

its elements; came the months of the moon.

 

Partially obscured by damp, bronzed leaves,

there, one winter Sunday before we met,

discarded on a path of a public park

was the Queen of Hearts, blithe and propitious.

 

 

 

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POETRY

HESPERIDES

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

As goldfinches begin to sing and sparrows

chirp in polyphony, and swallows,

martins, swifts hunt with grace, the palette

of attenuated gold, amber, rose

is layered along the sea’s horizon

and the sun becomes a perfect disk

in the filtering, vermilion haze.

Anonymous con trails criss-cross the compass.

A lone swimmer crawls across the bay.

 

The evening star, sudden as a lamp, glints

in the afterglow. A wispy rain cloud forms

and drifts away like smoke. Somewhere a peacock calls

then, elsewhere, a donkey brays – ridiculous

and sublime, like figures in a masque.

A fishing boat, its stern light lit, leaves harbour

to anchor in the shelving deep and cast its nets.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

STUDIES IN BLUE: PADDLING POOL, LLANDUDNO

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

Five men, in orangey yellow overalls,

using long handled rollers are painting

the paddling pool – which is the size of four

tennis courts – that blue which only colour charts

show or astronauts will see.  Beyond

is the limestone headland with rock-roses

amongst the scrub and fulmars nesting.

Far out to sea is a gathering,

stately and serried, of white, wind turbines.

 

I think of David Hockney’s iconic pools,

and of Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Combines’ –

hybrids of sculpture and paint  – and his ‘Jammers’ –

unvarnished poles and coloured canvas.

 

Uniformed artisans – artificers

of the imagination – these painters

each year layer this surreal blue. Sea water

fades it, and tiny feet.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

GERTRUDE BELL AND THE TREATY OF SÈVRES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.8K views

Paris, 1920

 

The treaty was signed in the Exhibition Room,

overseen by Marie Antoinette’s

dinner service. Like porcelain owls’ eyes,

they were witnesses of the delegates’ harsh

geometry, the fretwork jigsaw of desk

wallahs – Ottoman Mesopotamia

become modern Syria and Iraq.

 

Gertrude Bell was one of the delegates:

daughter of a philanthropic iron master;

Oxford graduate like T.E. Lawrence;

cartographer, mountaineer, linguist;

archaeologist, administrator,

public servant; Arabist, Al-Khatun,

‘Queen of the Desert’; poet, fluent

in Farsee, translator of Hafiz;

confidante of seraglios, anti-

Suffragist; anti-Zionist, maker

of the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq.

 

London, 1915

 

Between postings, lobbying powerful men,

as always, to let her be useful,

she continued her letters to ‘Dick’,

Charles Doughty-Wylie, career diplomat

and soldier, the unrequited, married

love of her life – eclectic letters

of Whitehall gossip, geo-political

tactics, romantic longing, and sorrow

for the Great War’s slaughters. Her last letter

was never finished. She had learned

of his death in action at Gallipoli.

 

Baghdad, 1926

 

She died from an overdose of sleeping pills.

There was no evidence of suicide.

King Faisal, the monarch she had made and whom

she was finding ‘difficult’ of late,

watched, from the shade of his private balcony,

the coffin carried through the dust to the thump

and blare of the garrison’s brass band.

He could see the Tigris beyond the graveyard.

His grandson’s disfigured body would be hung

from a lamp post near the square where Saddam’s

prodigious statue would be toppled with ropes.

 

‘To steadfastness and patience, friend, ask not
If Hafiz keep–
Patience and steadfastness I have forgot,
And where is sleep?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

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