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Armageddon

POETRY

A DEATH IN THE ROYAL SUITE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read772 views

She fell asleep as she often did thinking

of that first operation, the longest,

her team fourteen hours in the theatre,

a white child’s brain given to a black –

the furies raging. She woke at dawn wheezing,

coughing, chest tightening, inhaler out of reach,

knowing the attack for what it was,

hearing, somewhere distant, children’s voices.

In death her right hand was open as if

holding an orb, her left clutching her heart.

 

She had dreamt of the abandoned islands

of the lagoon; the broken bell towers,

the wild fig trees; the discovery,

with her girlhood’s lost companions, of an arm,

female, severed from a marble statue,

the supple hand holding an apple.

 

The famous surgeon died in the Royal Suite

that Easter Sunday when Armageddon came

at last to the Levant. She could hear

children egg-hunting on the greensward

five floors below – between waves breaking

in an attenuated roar, vestiges

of a storm out in the Cretan Sea.

 

Beyond the horizon to the east, countless

villages and cities went to smoke

then dust; deserts became relentless;

theologies cracked like bowls of eggs.

 

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POETRY

A PIECEMEAL CRISIS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read777 views

We were nearly two months into spring, only

moments away from summer, and yet, yet,

though three swifts had returned from Africa,

though a pair of ungainly wood pigeons

courted in a neighbour’s gutter, though there were

hot days perfumed with plants and bee laden,

wintry winds from the north harried clouds south,

and the sparrows were hesitant to lay,

the laburnum reluctant to unfurl

its golden curlicues. The Four Horsemen

are coming, not at a canter but

crabwise in dressage. Armageddon

is approaching, not with a bang and a flash

but little by little.

 

Note: This piece has also been published in EXTERMINATING ANGEL PRESS THE MAGAZINE.

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE YEAR’S MIDNIGHT

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read623 views

Though only on the edge of the long darkness

of the north, the days, as they always do,

had shortened here to barely six hours

of daylight. The next day, imperceptibly,

the light began to change, to lengthen.

 

…as if on the bridge of some vast ship

the command were given to turn the wheel

scarcely a degree, and sail the vessel sunward,

the rigging taut with southerly airs,

storm petrels following in the ship’s long wake…

 

For a week now a pair of blackbirds

has visited the terrace each morning,

in the best of light, to dart and peck

for insects. Each year the weather warms.

Each year the nesting begins earlier.

 

…as if two lovers shared the same dream –

a garden of lemon trees and apricots,

of music and poetry and fountains,

where their companionship might prosper – but woke

to find themselves in a windswept boneyard…

 

Although the physics of this mystery, this

near miracle should last, the biology

may not – the sun will still probably shine

in a world without birds and nests and eggs,

and the silent earth spin.

 

 

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POETRY

ODYSSEUS

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read731 views

This is the hardest month. Five days ago
clouds, as big as ships, in a blue sky blew fast
southwards. Next day there was an icy fog
that had silvered the lichen on the copse.
The sun had caught it. As the light rose the fog
dispersed and, through the damaged branches,
a church tower appeared – high, square, gothic.

Three days ago I crossed the motorway.
(I had entered the wrecked services first
to collect bottled water and oat bars).
A jack-knifed artic was still smouldering.
I looked away from the cars, the still figures.

The following day, I took to the canal.
The towpath was clear but the drying bed
was beginning to smell of diesel.

Yesterday, I walked the old toll road
towards the mountains. At first, its emptiness
pleased me. But I heard shouting somewhere close
then an engine catch and die. Last night I dreamt
of sheep high on the sides of the wide valley.

As I scale the last quarter of a mile
to safety, I cross to the narrow stream
falling near me. I dip my fingers.
The water is pristine. I mount the ridge
as snow begins to fall – but there is the lake
and sheep still grazing at its verdant margins.
I hear crows and see their blackness vague now
in the white against the sheer crags – then a blurred
orange. I focus the binoculars.
A climber, neck broken, long hair loose is
swinging in her harness…

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE CITY AND THE RIVER

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read558 views

From Woodside to the Pier Head by ferry

is a mile and a bit on waters

that smell always of mud and oil. Eastwards

is Overton Hill, the sandstone ridgeway –

westwards the Liverpool Bar Lightship,

Liverpool Bay and the Irish Sea,

and, far, far beyond, the widening

Atlantic skies where the weathers are made.

 

The Saxons named the river – a boundary

between kingdoms –  the Vikings the place,

with their numerous settlements on the heights.

Cotton and molasses and slavery

laid its Victorian foundations –

avenues, mansions, slums, alleyways –

a city of barbarism and grandeur.

 

My grandmother told her stories as

a litany of parables, wonders.

Each July 12th, the Green and the Orange

brawled murderously. Her father captained

a ‘coffin ship’ to Boston – her mother

took to drink. Johnny Flaws, a neighbour,

died in Arizona. Other neighbours

rushed from their houses for Armageddon –

others flitted late at night or early dawn.

The Cast Iron Shore at the Dingle was rust red

with residue from the scrapped, beached hulls.

 

Many decades ago, when the river

thronged with craft and was polluted, ships,

at midnight each New Year, would blow their horns,

for five minutes or more – a raggedy

wind ensemble of strangers wishing

strangers well. Now, in summer, the docks throng

with translucent, pink-tinged Moon Jellyfish.

 

 

 

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POETRY

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read714 views

One early afternoon at the nadir

or the zenith of the so-called Cuban

Missile Crisis – a good or, rather, bad

two years before ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘Fail-Safe’

were screened – I was waiting in the drear

and white-tiled catacombs of Liverpool’s

Central Station – where it always seemed

as if it were night and the blitz still on

and water appeared to drip continuously –

for the next train, under the Mersey,

to Chester, when I heard somewhere beyond me,

somewhere unidentifiable, a loud,

continuing roar like boulders crumbling

or, more likely, city blocks tumbling

onto the streets above and I feared

that either or both the shoe-thumping

Premier and the tanned President

had advanced Armageddon. I believed,

then, rhetoric and realpolitik

were one so the momentary fear was

visceral.

 

The Soviet Empire has been demolished,

the American reduced, not least

its consumption of Havana Cigars,

but Cuba welcomes all tourists, though those

with only U.S. dollars to exchange

are surcharged.

 

 

 

 

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