POETRY

POETRY

LA FENICE

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

At Punta Della Dogana, a cellist

seated under the arcade, is playing

melodies from operatic arias.

It is early evening. A fog horn sounds.

A cruise ship is sailing for Dubrovnik.

With a tug at the bows to pull, one to steer

at the stern, The Queen Elizabeth –

its superstructure higher than St Mark’s

Campanile, moves slowly toward us

through the Giudecca canal. Passengers,

silhouettes on the top deck, look down

on the packed, diverse crowds jostling along

the Riva Degli Schiavoni,

the embankment near the Doge’s palace,

where the traders from Dalmatia docked.

I think of the theatre – true to its name

refurbished from its rococo ashes –

the five tiers of boxes, the gold leaf,

the papier maché, the trompe d’oeil

in a city of commerce and sea water.

The ship is tugged past us. The cellist plays ‘La

donna è mobile’.

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on Facebook in 2016.

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POETRY

O BRAVE NEW WORLD!

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.8K views

On the third floor of Ca’ Rezzonico –

where gondoliers slept when the palazzo

was let to the song writer Cole Porter –

is Egidio Martini’s collection

of five centuries of Venetian art.

Three of the floors’ small windows survive,

each an intentional belvedere.

Two view the Grand Canal, the third south west.

The eye follows the perspective below:

a canal and its quay with inevitable

eclectic craft, stone bridges and turisti;

then tenements and the terracotta tiles –

but not the anticipated skyline,

on the mainland, of the Euganean Hills,

distant and pale as if the background to

a nativity or crucifixion

instead seven, multi-storey cruise liners.

 

On the floor below are the city’s masters:

Canal, Guardi, Longhi, and Tiepolo

whose son’s fresco, Il Mundo Novo, depicts

the backs of a late eighteenth century

Venetian crowd of all clans and classes

queuing to see a huckster’s peep show

of America – the crassness

of the machine observed in profile

only by the artist and his late father.

When the son died La Serenissima

had ended. Bonaparte had arrived.

 

From the ballroom below there is music.

‘You’re the tops…You’re Napoleon Brandy…

You’re a painting by Botticelli…

You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa…the moon

over Mae West’s shoulder.’

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE FISH MARKET

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read2.7K views

‘ The hand holds so much power – the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy.’ SUPPORT, Lorenzo Quinn

 

The resin and fibreglass installation

of one of the sculptor’s small children’s

hands and wrists emerges from the Grand Canal

many times life size and startlingly white

to brace the rose Ca’ Sagredo Hotel –

once a palace where Galileo stayed –

as if to prevent its imminent collapse.

 

When we arrive on the opposite bank

so you can take photographs the market

has closed, all the fishmongers gone but one

gutting and beheading – his right arm tattooed

with a shoal of fish, his left a death’s head.

The otherwise empty arcades echo

with shouting and barking of seagulls,

herring and black-headed, scrapping and flapping

over discarded fish heads and entrails

among the scattered polystyrene boxes

and the plastic wrapping.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE GHETTO

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.8K views

We came here more than twenty five years ago

but know when we reach the Trei Archi bridge

we have gone too far and turn. (Distracted by

a young black man begging with a baseball cap

we had walked passed the sottoporto

where the curfew gates had been). We see

a man in a keppel show the entrance

to his children. Inside the Old Ghetto now

are information points, and a café

and a restaurant with kosher options.

In the New Ghetto’s spacious campo

are more eateries, and an accordionist

panhandling alfresco customers.

Stone benches have been placed, shade trees planted.

A patrol of three armed soldiers passes.

 

There is a generic memorial

to the Holocaust, and one to the transports

from the ghetto, the last including the sick

and the dying. Though the Doge et al

chose to believe Jews were as one there were

many languages and five synagogues

– three Ashkenazi, two Sephardi.

All waterways led to Venice, all winds

were fortunate for this cosmopolis.

Distant cousins of mine might have crossed

these pavings, disappeared into the fire.

 

A waitress blows a kiss to one of the soldiers,

the youngest, as they patrol again.

I think of the Prague Ghetto, its graveyard,

its leaning grave markers dotted with small stones.

Though we are never far from the sea

there are no pebbles here.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE GULLS OF VENICE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K 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 read1.8K 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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