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POETRY

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.8K views

The Armistice was agreed at 5.10 –

in Foch’s personal railway carriage

– among the cigar and brandy fumes.

The Chancellories of Europe knew

thirty minutes later. Big Ben was rung

for the first time in four years and gas lamps

lit in Paris. There was dancing, and streamers.

 

Foch insisted the truce would not take effect

until 11.00  – ostensibly

so the news could be keyed and carried to

each trench and dugout on the Western Front.

 

Thousands of soldiers were killed that morning.

The last to die – at 10.59 –

was Private Henry Günther from Baltimore,

advancing with comrades in ignorance

through the wild woodland of the Argonne.

The division’s history records: ‘Almost

as he fell, the gunfire died away

and an appalling silence prevailed’.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

LIKE A FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT

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

‘It is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.’
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South Kenneth M. Stampp

 

While the patrols inflamed the sudden sky
with bodies charred beyond race, runaways,
still green from the deep forests of Guinea,
crossed Georgia’s strange, red earth then the barrens,
where pines sighed like ancestral ghosts, and swamps,
where vipers lisped in honeysuckle,
to reach the shore and walk home through the sea –
whose waters, as they drowned, boomed like drums.

That aged schooner, the ‘Human Shame’ – out of
Liverpool, Lagos, New Orleans,
Baltimore, Ferguson… – is anchoring
with a clatter of chains.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

The Armistice was agreed at 5.10 –
in Foch’s personal railway carriage
– among the cigar and brandy fumes.
The Chancellories of Europe knew
thirty minutes later. Big Ben was rung
for the first time in four years and gas lamps
lit in Paris. There was dancing and streamers.

Foch insisted the truce would not take effect
until 11.00 – ostensibly
so the news could be keyed and carried to
each trench and dugout on the Western Front.

Thousands of soldiers were killed that morning.
The last to die – at 10.59 –
was Private Henry Günther from Baltimore,
advancing with comrades in ignorance
through the wild woodland of the Argonne.
The division’s history records: ‘Almost
as he fell, the gunfire died away
and an appalling silence prevailed’.

 

 

 

Pages:

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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