POETRY

POETRY

THE SORES OF WAR

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

‘…sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments…’ President Donald J. Trump

 

In a letter to the New York Times three years

before the war General Robert E. Lee

described slavery per se as ‘a moral

and political evil’ and, in the States,

‘a greater evil to the white man’

than the black. In 1857 Lee

had been his father-in-law’s executor.

George Custis had manumitted his slaves

on his death bed there and then but ‘no white man

was in the room’. Lee promised them freedom

in five years. Three escaped but were caught.

The plantation’s overseer refused

to whip them. The local constable agreed.

They were stripped and lashed many times –  the men

fifty, their sister twenty. ‘Lay it on well!’

the General ordered. After the war

Lee refused an invitation to join

senior officers from the Blue and the Gray

at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg

to mark key moments with granite monuments.

‘I think it wiser,’ he replied, ‘not to keep

open the sores of war.’

 

 

Note: The poem, with here the addition of an extra line, was first published on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on 31.8.17.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

RIVA DEI SETTE MARTIRI, VENICE

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

If you stroll far enough, long enough eastwards

on Riva Degli Schiavoni (Shore

of the Slaves) – before it was a wide,

stone promenade it was sand and mud  –

stroll away from the crowds, past the Danieli,

the Arsenale, the vaporetto stops

and beyond, with San Georgio Majore

across the Bacino Di San Marco –

you come to the Shore of the Seven Martyrs,

where now private yachts and small cruise ships dock.

 

It was the Riva Dell’Imperio –

built by the Fascists in the ’30s –

when the German Kriegsmarine torpedo boats

moored there. The officers were partying

one July night – the carousing loud

through the blacked out canals – when a sentry

disappeared. A crowd of hundreds was forced

to watch the seven murders – men who were

already incarcerated – and children

forced to clean the blood from the stones. Later,

body unmarked, lungs full of sea water,

the sentry’s corpse washed up against the oak piles

that keep the city safe in the lagoon.

 

Nothing extraordinary here. There are

two other sites in Venice, many more

throughout Italy, with greater numbers –

like the bus exchange in Gubbio,

Piazza Dei Quaranta Martiri,

or Rome’s Adreatine massacre.

Nothing remarkable anywhere perhaps

given half a million Italian war dead

except mostly, despite the witnesses,

the crimes are unpunished.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

MOUNTAIN VIEW

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments2 min read1.4K views

Some time after midnight, when the bars have closed,

the hoots and laughter of revellers

on the stone-clad stairs wakes us. Much later

wind, billowing through the open corridors

of the steel framed building, shakes our door

intermittently like some errant soul.

In the shallow valley below the hotel

a cock crows above the gusts and the rattles.

 

***

 

In the morning a warm west wind blows

over the sea from what was Carthage.

The valley slopes gradually to a cove.

Before tourism this was wilderness –

only the tideless waves on the gritty beach.

Now there are a score or so of sun loungers,

two tavernas, two supermarkets and a bar –

and some smallholdings amongst the scrub.

 

***

 

On the other side of the valley are

two more resort hotels like this, open

from May to October. At night, they are lit

like cruise ships. Beyond is Mount Vasiliko –

wind turbines on its slopes and, at its summit,

a monitoring post. Mare Nostrum

is everybody’s – a dozen or more navies,

and thousands of desperate optimists.

 

***

 

From the terrace by the pool, we can see,

through mountainous clefts, Mount Ida’s peak.

At the summit is Timios Stavros,

the Holy Cross chapel. In a cave

on its slopes, Zeus was born. Swifts call above us –

ecumenical, celestial, their flight

calligraphic. Crete is shaped like a

scabbardfish, feinting between Europe

and Africa. I think of the empty,

wintry rooms – the patience of islanders

used to long absences.

 

 

 

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POETRY

JEWISH TUNES

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

Cole Porter was an Episcopalian,

a farmer’s son, from Peru, Indiana,

whose ambition was to write ‘Jewish Tunes’.

My mother’s favourite song was ‘Begin

the Begine’, which Cole Porter composed,

the story goes, one evening at the piano

in The Ritz Bar of the Ritz Hotel, Paris.

The love song is in a minor key.

It personifies longing, wit, irony.

 

My mother and father met in the city

of Kano, Northern Nigeria.

‘When they begin the beguine,
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back the night of tropical splendour,
It brings back a memory evergreen!…’

She and my father, Gentile and Jew,

danced to the music at their wedding

in Kano’s driest, dustiest month –

the month Heydrich’s Wannsee Conference

agreed The Final Solution in

less than ninety minutes.

 

 

 

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POETRY

AT LENIN’S TOMB

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

We joined the queue one warm afternoon two days

before Victory Day, and the week Putin

was first crowned. There were police everywhere –

mostly, it seemed, armed thirteen year olds

in wide-brimmed caps. One halted the queue

to allow a group of be-medalled,

self-conscious veterans to enter first.

Inside, we were ‘forbidden to smoke, talk, photograph,

video, or have your hands in your pockets’.

 

Exiled to the conifer forests

of Central Siberia with its gnat

legions of summer, its winter numbing,

he took his pseudonym then soubriquet

from the river Lena, its waters

replete with minerals and mammoth tusks.

 

Curious the great revolutionary

with that questioning, directing look  –

who found sleep elusive so studied French

grammar books to send him to the Land of Nod –

through no choice of his own, preserved like a

waxwork or a shaman!

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE RED SHOES

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read1.8K views

Ten minutes or so into a performance

of Mathew Bourne’s ballet at Sadler’s Wells,

with the principal alone spot lit en pointe,

there was a muffled shout off stage right

and a clatter as if a metal ladder

had been toppled. (Professional dance –

that always seems heartbreakingly effortless –

is always on the cusp of injury).

The music stopped suddenly, the curtains closed

– and, as the house lights came on, we were asked

to remain seated, assured the show would start

again soon. Voices rose like flocks of sparrows.

Mobiles were turned back on. Texts and selfies sent…

 

Many decades before there were cell phones

you had a pair of red high heel shoes,

of which you were especially fond

having the spirit of a dancer.

We had been to a rather dull party

in Liverpool 8, and, changing trains

at Hooton – from electric to steam,

as if in some cut-price sci-fi movie –

you stumbled and one of your shoes fell

between the carriage and the platform.

You limped from Chester General on my arm,

to a taxi, like an elegant, injured bird.

I returned to Hooton the next day.

A porter had seen and retrieved the shoe –

scuffed, and besmirched all over with soot.

You said, ‘Some glass slipper!’. ‘Some prince!’ I said…

 

The ballet recommenced. We watched the girl’s

destiny unfold like a Greek tragedy –

her hubris vanity, men, the joy of dance? –

and end, like Anna Karenina,

in front of a steam train.

 

 

 

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