POETRY

POETRY

IN THE MOOD

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

It has begun to rain so the park is off.

In the theatre foyer we learn that though

the magician has sold out there will be

a brass band concert in the main house.

We consult the little one. Yes, she would

like to hear them. We choose the cheapest seats –

the unraked stalls – and are solitary,

in the middle, three rows from the front.

 

Judging by the piano, the double bass

and the layout of the black music desks

it is a big not a brass band – reeds

and rhythm to the right, brass to the left.

 

The players take their places casually

though in black trousers and crimson shirts.

The band leader enters in a white jacket

and black bow tie. He is stooped and shuffles

slightly. He sits at the centre facing us.

‘3, 4,’ he calls with the authority

of his prime and his right hand counts it out.

The first chord, on the unfettered air

from the full brass and reeds, transports me…

 

Between the numbers, the leader conjures

– with his easy charm, his corny jokes,

his gentle name dropping – Glenn Miller,

Duke Ellington, Joe Loss, Count Basie,

Caroll Gibbons, the Dorsey Brothers…

 

She watched the first three or four pieces –

decided there was nothing to see

other than someone occasionally

standing up to play – and chilled out, her head

on Grandma’s lap, her feet on mine, waving

her right hand on, surely, the down beat. ‘My

heart is full of rhythm….’

 

 

 

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POETRY

MADELEINE MOMENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.6K views

‘And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine…’

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, Marcel Proust

 

The day the season’s second Atlantic storm

was due there was I – after a sausage

and bacon bap with brown sauce and an Earl Grey

in the heritage station’s draughty café –

celebrating my 74th birthday

with my small family in a British Rail

standard compartment on the Santa Special.

 

We journeyed from Llangollen to Lapland

(aka Carrog) with mince pies, miniature Baileys

for the adults and juice for our granddaughter,

who gave me a cartoon sestych entitled

‘My Grandpa is amazing – he does…’.

She appeared with me in each frame as I

talked, shopped, word processed, cooked, travelled and read.

We passed pastel shaded December fields,

empty copses filled with russet leaves,

and bleak hawthorn hedge rows festooned with a wild

clematis – Travellers’ Joy or Old Man’s Beard.

 

Someone, despite the notices, had left

a window open in the corridor,

so, as we went through the long Berwyn Tunnel,

it yellowed with billowing sooty smoke

that seeped under the compartment’s door.

It was a madeleine moment: crossing

sulphurous bridges, waiting on ill-lit

platforms amongst gouts of steam and fog,

shuddering reflections in carriage windows.

 

As we climbed, we left the river – by turns

meandering through meadows then white water –

to still slowly gouge the valley bed,

and we had a visit from Santa himself,

with Elves, bearing gifts. Our granddaughter

was appropriately shy and polite

though she is calculatedly and/or

patronisingly agnostic about

F.C. – and reasonably sure God is

imaginary and certain there is

no such thing anywhere in the universe

as zero gravity. I am certain

I still believed when I was nearly 7.

The world seemed an obscurantist place.

 

At Lapland, we queued to pose with Santa

et al for a photo op on a sledge.

It began to drizzle. In the waiting room

a coal fire was burning in the grate.

My grand daughter hugged me. I felt gravely

light of heart and head, warmly welcome

in the universe – and thought suddenly

of a world garlanded with Old Man’s Beard.

 

 

 

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POETRY

MEMENTO VIVERE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.6K views

i.m. Ian Jones

 

There is no right age to die – or way to mourn.

As I thought of him, the small bush I could see

from the desk I wrote at – a plant whose name

we had forgotten, lost – was burgeoning:

its leaves greening, swelling, as spring, despite

that day’s north westerly, took hold. In time –

which he no longer had or had in

profligate abundance – an array

of delicate pink and white flowers would bloom.

 

I thought of his talents, his unassuming

skills – mammon’s measurements – and what makes us

human:  his smile, chuckle, patience, gentle

irony, and his kindness. That chance

perennial would be a remembrance.

 

It flowered with an abundance of petals

in early summer. Within weeks the flowers

began to die, singly, and then in bunches.

The leaves withered and fell. He would have grinned

hugely at such bathos.

 

 

 

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POETRY

WAITING BY THE RIVER

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.6K views

We were waiting in the car – in a car park

by a river in spate – for mummy, daddy

and grandma to return. Storm driven rain

was tattooing on the roof but we

were snug playing I spy. ‘What next?’ you said.

‘How about singing me a song?’ I said.

You said, ‘I don’t know what to sing,’ I said,

‘So, let that be the first line of your song.’

 

We spoke of rhymes and repetitions.

And she made her song by the rushing waters,

sang it clearly, roundly as small angels may.

 

I don’t know what to sing.

I don’t know what to sing.

I can’t think of anything.

I can’t think of anything.

 

The songs have gone away.

The songs have gone away.

There are no songs to play.

There are no songs to play.

 

 

©Evelyn Chapman and David Selzer 2016

 

 

 

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POETRY

A LETTER TO ARTHUR RANSOME

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read1.9K views

‘The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.’

Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

 

Encouraged and supported by my doughty,

doting mother and her two sisters – all

elementary school girls – at nine I passed

the entrance exam for a local, day

boys’ preparatory school. We called the teachers

‘Sir’, irrespective of gender, and ‘Ma’

behind their backs if they were female.

 

Mine was Ma Riddell and the first task she set

that September was to write a letter

to Arthur Ransome, telling him how much

we had enjoyed ‘Swallows and Amazons’,

which the class had read the previous year.

The Head Master would choose which letter to send.

 

I was too conscious of my new school cap

and blazer, of being by chance somewhere

I should want to be, ashamed of where I lived

and being found out, to say I had not

read the book, knew nothing about the author.

 

Of course, my letter was chosen, much

to Ma Riddell’s chagrin – not a word

but an expression, facial and tonal,

I knew. “Time you did joined-up writing, Selzer!”

Ah, pedagogy as command rather than

tuition! I said nothing, of course – nor

at home. I assumed the three sisters knew

what they were saving up and paying for.

 

I read all of the novels. An only,

fatherless child, I longed for the idea

of siblings, did not snigger at Titty’s name,

fell in love with the stern kindness of Susan.

I cannot remember what I wrote or whether

he replied. Much later I learned he was

supposedly an MI5 agent,

was definitely married to Trotsky’s

secretary. They lived in Westmoreland,

childless, above the lakes he fictionalised.

He was a Guardian writer, left wing

and affable – a father figure.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read2K views

‘Senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged as their countryman.’

Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

 

Dante and Beatrice saw Boethius –

the sixth century consul, chamberlain,

intellectual and family man –

in Paradise: one of the twelve shining lights

in the sun’s heavenly firmament,

along with Solomon and Aquinas.

 

Imprisoned in a tower for alleged treason

and under sentence of execution,

he wrote De Consolatione

Philosophiae, a dialogue

between himself and Lady Philosophy,

reflecting – he in prose, she in poetry –

on wealth’s and fame’s transitory nature,

on virtue transcending fortune: almost

glib, smug if it had been written in freedom.

His paragon, Plato, would have inspired him,

and Socrates busy in prison.

Did he act it out in his loneliness?

 

His assassins – who killed him, according to

conflicting accounts, with axe, sword, club, garrotte –

did not record his last words. He was murdered

on orders of Theodoric, his erstwhile

friend, king of the Goths and Italy.

He was venerated as a catholic

martyr, allegedly walking headless

in death, and a catholic theologian,

his revered writing influencing

Augustine, for instance, as well as Dante,

masters and servants of allegory.

He was without any superstitions

or Christian beliefs, and zealous

for the public good so might have found such

hagiolatry amusing – or merely

a sign of their dark times.

 

 

 

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