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POETRY

NEW YEAR, BUDAPEST

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments1 min read811 views

On one of the corners of St Stephen’s square

is a café, the California

Coffee Company, with cheery slogans,

in English, extolling the benefits

of the bean. A window seat gives a view,

across the square, of the west entrance

to the basilica of Szent Istvan,

its portico embossed in gold with

‘Ego Sum Veritas et Vita’.

 

Our backs to the basilica we walk

down Zyrini Street towards the Danube,

Buda rising high on its western slopes.

As we pass the Cognitive Department

of the Soros-funded University

of Central Europe – which the government

has shut down – three students emerge carrying

a mattress in plastic wrapping, one wearing

a sweatshirt marked ‘#istandwithceu’.

 

On the embankment near the Chain Bridge –

designed and built by British engineers

after the ’48 revolution –

are empty sparkler packets, New Year’s discards.

The gun metal water is fast, turbulent.

Upstream is a row of cast iron boots and shoes.

There, while the Red Army shelled the city,

the Christmas and New Year of ’44/

’45, the Arrow Cross (whose informal

motto was ‘Perseverance’) shot thousands – Jews,

communists, Roma – forcing them to remove

their footwear first, and stand on the embankment’s edge

their backs to the river.

 

 

 

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POETRY

INTERSECTIONS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read527 views

There is a young woman with a wooden hoop

almost as big as herself – and a small dog

not much bigger than her head – who performs

circus tricks, where Terez Boulevard meets

Andrassy Avenue – named for an Empress

and a Count before old Europe fell apart.

As the three lanes idle at red and the dog

waits on the kerb the girl and the hoop

become an astrolabe, a gyroscope

within the interstices of traffic lights.

When she stills and bows to the varied windscreens

the dog leaps to her shoulder and together –

dancer, dog and hoop – they approach their rewards,

ignoring the anonymous tourists

crossing behind her, as if the corrida

with steel and engines were all. Yesterday,

though a slicing wind from the Danube

kept most windows shut, she gyrated

regardless. Today in snowflakes like

falling stars she spins still.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE RABBI AND THE EMPEROR

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read569 views

In the summer of 1913, the last

Habsburg Emperor made a state visit

to Pressburg – later, after The Treaty

of Versailles, renamed Bratislava.

One photograph shows his open carriage

stopped in front of the Pressburg Yeshiva,

whose students came from every part

of the Empire. Franz Josef leans forward

to speak to Rabbi Akiva Sofer,

whose great grandfather founded the school –

two dynasties talking briefly together.

 

During the rule of the Communist Party

most of the erstwhile Jewish quarter was razed

to build a four lane bridge across the Danube.

After independence a memorial

to Slovakia’s murdered Jews was placed

on the site of a shul. The word ‘Remember’,

in Hebrew and Slovak, is engraved

into the black marble plinth. Often

little stones are placed haphazardly

on the marble as is the Jewish custom

and tradition: pebbles of mourning,

of safekeeping of souls, of memory.

 

In the streets and the squares were unremarked

small stones – where the Rabbi was waiting,

where the carriage wheels turned.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

A VIEW FROM THE CASTLE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read362 views

It is not the winter-grey Danube flowing –

hundreds of feet below – fast to Budapest,

nor the suspension bridge – with its high rise

circular restaurant – commemorating

the failed uprising against the Nazis,

nor the outline of the Vienna Alps

fifty miles away, nor the wind turbines

covering the plain between, but the concrete

Soviet era apartment blocks

now painted white and some in pastel shades

that first catch the eye from this stronghold

on a rocky hill far above the town

on the second day of 2018.

This must be Europe’s centre: liberated,

Catholic, polyglot; in Magyar,

German, Slovak; Pozsonyi Vár,

Pressburger Schloss, Bratislavsky Hrad.

 

As we descend the narrow, cobbled street

that turns with the hill’s contours, gusts of wind

whirl into the air small strips of gold paper,

detritus of New Year’s Eve celebrations,

and a party of Australian tourists

comes round the corner their resolute guide’s

tartan umbrella flapping unsafely.

 

*

 

The runway faces east so the plane

must bank westwards to fly by Vienna,

Prague, London to land at Manchester.

On the right are the Little Carpathians

with vineyards on the slopes and at their heart

wildernesses of beasts and plants still intact –

left, below, river, castle, tower blocks

reduced to perfection.

 

 

 

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