Tag Archives

chanter

POETRY

REFLECTIONS ON IMMORTALITY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

From our bedroom window I can almost touch

the laburnum’s tresses of yellow blooms.

The tree was here before we moved in

fifty years ago. Most years it has fountained

flowers – which, from a distance, seem golden.

A quarter century is the likely span

of a laburnum. Though this tree is on

borrowed time bees congregate regardless.

 

Perhaps being featured in one of my poems

has encouraged its longevity:

‘…By our side gate the old laburnum – whose wood,

in time, may make a chanter or a flute –

is in bloom. I look up through its branches.

There is a little azure and smidgens

of green – and droplets, ringlets, links, chains

of cascading yellow, a torrent of gold….’

 

I am long beyond my allotted span

of the psalmist’s ‘three score years and ten’,

and take note of her/his admonition:

‘…if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

for it is soon cut off, and we fly away’.

I shall be good enough only for ashes

the wind might scatter. This tree, however,

might make music.

 

Note: the poem mentioned above is AN AFTERNOON IN MAY.

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

AN AFTERNOON IN MAY

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2.2K views

By our side gate the old laburnum – whose wood,

in time, may make a chanter or a flute –

is in bloom. I look up through its branches.

There is a little azure and smidgens

of green – and droplets, ringlets, links, chains

of cascading yellow, a torrent of gold.

 

***

 

Our Victorian neighbourhood fills

with the machined roar of twin turbofans.

An Airbus Beluga – more Arctic whale

than Caspian sturgeon – with cargoes

of worked metal from Toulouse, banks low

over the churchyard’s antique horse chestnuts.

 

***

 

A heron, crossing from one river

to another, beats above our chimney pots,

and three swifts, harbingers, curve through the blue.

A blackbird, perched on the laburnum’s

aureate halcyon canopy,

imbues the street with song.

 

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
5 Comments
POETRY

PIPER LAIDLAW OF LOOS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.5K views

The Allies were waiting to go over the top

to attack a weak enemy position.

The British used gas for the first time.

Unfortunately, after a half an hour,

the wind changed and it all blew back

over the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Unsurprisingly, the men were distressed.

Lieutenant Young called out, “Pipe them together,

Laidlaw, for God’s sake, pipe them together.”

And the forty year old veteran climbed

the ladder, tuned his pipes and marched back and fore

along the parapet, playing first

‘The Blue Bonnets O’er The Border’ – about

Bonnie Prince Charlie’s invasion of England –

and then ‘The Standard On The Braes O’Mar’ –

about the raising of the Jacobite flag.

He marched until shrapnel in his leg downed him

then, sitting, played on. And the laddies were

‘piped together’ and went over the top.

They were almost immediately

in enfilade from the German gunners

in an abandoned factory. Nothing

was achieved. No ground was gained or lost.

Piper Laidlaw VC died nearly eighty

and was buried in an unmarked grave.

 

This almanac of ironies is truly

beyond satire for something in this story –

and the paintings, photographs, footage

of other Pipe Majors playing the pibroch

on other parapets, in No-Man’s-Land –

moves to tears not laughter: certainly

the music – the chanter and the drone –

the selflessness, of course, and, perhaps,

the conviction that their history

and their traditions would transcend misfortune.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments