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Charles II

POETRY

THE SHIP OF THESEUS AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read2.4K views

Theseus, with the help of Ariadne,

daughter of Minos, King of Crete, slew

the Minotaur – that creature with a bull’s head

and a man’s body – in the labyrinth

which imprisoned him. They rescued the fourteen

noble youths and maidens of Athens,

sacrificial tribute, who had been food

for the Minotaur. With the princess

and the young people, Theseus escaped

from Crete and sailed his trireme to Athens.

(En route he left Ariadne on Naxos,

for reasons which need not detain us here).

 

The Athenians, in gratitude for saving

the scions of their nobility, revered

the ship in which they had returned, maintained it

for many centuries – replacing

rotten timber, frayed rope, and torn canvas.

Inevitably, this being Ancient Greece,

a problem arose, and persists even now,

of a philosophical nature:

at what point, if any, does the Ship of

Theseus cease to be Theseus’ ship?

 

Thomas Hobbes – sometime mathematics tutor

to Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II –

and most famous for opining, during

the havoc of the English Civil War,

that life in anything other than

a comprehensive autocracy

would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish

and short’ – posed an interesting what if

regarding The Ship of Theseus.

 

Imagine that, instead of recycling

the redundant parts for, say, fuel,

they had been made the responsibility

of a custodian, who rebuilt the ship

following the original blueprint,

so that, in time, there would have been two vessels,

both from the original design,

one from the original materials –

and the latter, Hobbes concluded, might still

properly be identified as

The Ship of Theseus. Some, however,

may think the issue of identity

irrelevant, one ship being seaworthy,

the other a tad dystopian –

which brings me neatly to the House of Windsor

aka Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, aka

Hanover, Stuart, Tudor etcetera.

 

Proper names belong, are unique, confer,

confirm, create identity: Ariadne

of Naxos, the Minotaur of Knossos –

who, by the way, were siblings, but that tale

is for another day. So, to Charles III,

tax dodger, and ersatz Renaissance man:

who seems unlike his gaudy namesakes –

the father, who spectacularly lost his head;

the son, something of a stage door Johnny –

except both his predecessors also believed

they had been anointed by God himself,

and were similarly obsessed with worldly wealth.

He can trace his line to Alfred the Great,

King of the Anglo-Saxons, and Kenneth

MacAlpin, King of the Picts. All of which is

as insubstantial and insignificant

as an imagined splinter from the deck

of some mythical ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ROSEBUD

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments2 min read1.3K views

‘It is the most humble day of my life,’ Rupert Murdoch

 

Beech trees, in full leaf, more than a hundred years

high in the park a street away from here,

rise sheer like raggedy cliffs, a last hurrah

of pragmatic philanthropy – like Rome

before the fall – amid the indifferent

splendour of empire: town halls designed

like palaces, museums like town halls.

It dies spluttering in Flanders mud, choking

in dugouts on Gallipoli’s cliffs.

 

Rupert Murdoch’s dad, a Sydney Sun (sic)

hack, who had the ears, surprise surprise,

of politicos north and south, exposed

Anzac carnage on Ottoman shores,

and brought the boys back just after Christmas –

so doing good through cunning, his means

justified by his goal, the goal always right.

 

As Citizen Kane aka Randolph Hearst –

one of the first tycoons of the gutter press,

war monger, dirt disher, future mangler –

lay dying, “Rosebud,” was the last he said:

a small, wooden sledge, the name in floral white,

his curtailed childhood tangible among the

vast, serried desert of his acquisitions.

 

High above the beeches of St James Park

the Dirty Digger watches from his penthouse

as white pelicans – a gift from Russia

for Charles II, who knew a thing or two

about dads – rise from the lake in the park,

fly towards the Palace then wheel back

over Horse Guards and the MOD,

the birds – their call a grunt and a whine – for some,

a symbol of the Passion on the Cross.

The Breaker of the English-speaking world plots

what lie he will tell Death.

 

 

Note: the poem has subsequently been published in EAP: THE MAGAZINE Winter 2012: Errors of the Gods – https://exterminatingangel.com/rosebud/

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE COLSTON BUN

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read1.7K views

‘And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.’ DEUTERONOMY 12.3

‘Black deaths do not have a good press, especially when they occur in the custody of our custodians. The media leads the public to believe that our guardians can do no wrong. Racism leads them to believe that blacks can do no right. The silence of the custodial system is compounded by the silences of racism.’ DEADLY SILENCE: BLACK DEATHS IN CUSTODY, Institute of Race Relations, London, 1991

 

Anger, one Sunday in June, overcame

decorum in that diverse city,

and – no doubt, inspired by the toppling

of other graven tyrants – righteously

pulled down the effigy, with a thump of stone

and a hollow gong of metal, and tossed it

from the quay into the harbour waters.

***

The Royal African Company received

its charter from Charles II and James,

his brother, hence the US east coast seaports

Jamestown and Charleston. It was established

by the restored royals to provide them,

free of interference from the Commons,

with their own spending money. Board members

included the philosopher, John Locke.

The company’s profits came mostly

from enslaving West African men, women

and children, and transporting them across

the North Atlantic’s turbulence. More than

two hundred thousand were taken, and nearly

fifty thousand died on the journey,

the firm’s double entry bookkeeping shows.

 

One prominent member of the board

was Edward Colston, a Bristol merchant,

the city from whose harbour the slavers sailed,

and which, in due course, would make chocolates

and cigarettes. His philanthropy

inveigled the streets like a bad conscience,

almost a rebuke of victimhood:

his name on a hospital, a school,

a bun flavoured with dried currants and allspice

topped with sugar, given to the poor yearly

and still made for sale by local bakeries –

and himself looking thoughtful in bronze

with a periwig and a walking stick.

 

Apologists who claim he was merely

of his time, an accidental racist,

and collateral ethical damage,

like Henry Wills and Elizabeth Fry,

should remember John Locke, his damascene

moment unrecorded, who threw his shares

into the fire. ‘Slavery is so vile and

miserable an estate of man …that ’tis

hardly to be conceived’. That June Sunday

civic anger overcame decorum.

 

 

Note: The above is a revised version of the piece originally published on 25.6.20. The revisions are the result of e discussions with a regular reader, Elise Oliver – please see Comments.

 

 

 

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