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Greek

POETRY

THE GROVES

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

For Matt Baker

We are sitting on a bench in a peaceful

place popular even on a winter’s day

now lockdown has been eased. This tree-lined

terraced embankment beside the river –

with a bandstand and moorings for pleasure boats –

was commissioned by one of the city’s

Victorian worthies at his own expense

to match the elegant pedestrian

suspension bridge built by a developer.


If we sit here long enough with our take-out

hot chocolates and toasted sandwiches –

counting the passersby wearing masks –

someone we know may saunter past with their dog.

Here there used to be a whiteness of swans,

but a flock of panhandling black-headed gulls,

squawkily scrambling for the odd dry crust,

has, as it were, elbowed out the large mute birds.


When the Roman mercenaries built the camp

on the sandstone bluff behind us, when barques

from Anjou docked downstream with cargoes

of wine and spices, the air, like now,

was multi-lingual. We can hear snatches

of French and Polish, Greek and Arabic.


If we sit here long enough late winter’s

high tide may rise, as now, over the weir,

and begin to cover the embankment’s steps,

propelling various bosky flotsam

upstream at a proverbial rate of knots,

with a couple of mallards and a moorhen

floating past on a wizened trunk the size

of an alligator from the bayous.

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POETRY

PHILLIS WHEATLEY: 1753-1784

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read2K views

Enslaved in the Gambia or Senegal,

scholars surmise, she survived the nauseous

and violent bottom line of the

Triangular Trade to be bought aged eight

as a maid for his wife by John Wheatley,

merchant and tailor of British-ruled Boston,

a known progressive in education.

 

She was christened ‘Phillis’ after the slave ship

that took her childhood. She was prodigious,

and was removed from domestic duties.

Tutored by his daughter, at twelve she knew

Latin, Greek, the Bible and, later,

became a true genius of Augustan

couplets – their wit, their beat, their certainty.

With her master’s son, she went to London,

where her poems were published to some acclaim.

Her encomium to George Washington

was re-published by Thomas Paine. ‘Proceed…

A crown,  a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.’

 

Ah, how we tolerate unflinchingly,

unthinkingly absurd and absolute

contradictions – freedom and servitude,

enlightenment and doctrinal dogma!

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.’

 

On Wheatley’s death she was freed – all that his will

left her: liberty without means. She married

a free black grocer. They lived in poverty.

Two infant children died. And yet she wrote –

but without white, male or titled patrons

was unpublished. Her husband was jailed for debt.

She supported herself and her sickly son

as a scullery maid. One December day

they died in squalor, were laid in unmarked graves.

 

What did she choose to remember of the seas

pounding against the timbers, and the cries,

and the chains days after days after days?

Or the drums into the night; or the smoke

from the cooking fires at dawn; the bright clothes;

the songs; her mother’s voice?

 

 

Note: The poem was first published on the site in July 2015.  It is published here with minor amendments.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE VICISSITUDES OF HISTORY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments2 min read1.5K views

i.m. Clara Isenberg

Her maiden surname was Isenberg, ‘iron

mountain’, one that had been chosen for them

from the Imperial list. I was often

uneasy, unsure in her presence.

She hardly ever smiled. I realise now

because I looked so like her son, my father.

She died, from kidney failure, when I was nine.

 

On the mantelpiece in our dining room

is a pair of figurines – faux Meissen –

brought in her parents’ wooden suitcase, wrapped

in linen, journeying from Leopoldstat,

Vienna, to Whitechapel, London.

 

She had a hat shop in Hendon. Sometimes,

when my mother helped out, I was allowed

to look into the deep drawers where the hats,

like exotic plants, lay on tissue paper –

but when the shop was full of customers

I stayed in the workroom. There were lengths of felt,

rolls of ribbon, a barred sash window

and a double burner that smelled of gas.

The two shop girls would make a fuss of me.

 

Each figurine has a young man and woman

dressed and posed as if just emerging

from Marie Antoinette’s rustic retreat

at Versailles, and mirrored in the matching

figurine. Before my time the head

of one of the swains has been glued back on

and the maids have lost a hand apiece

but their expressions of bucolic delight

have remain undiminished whatever

the vicissitudes of history.

 

While Grandpa did his ARP duty

back east at the Fire Station in Cable Street,

Nanny went to the spiritualist church

in Hendon. The Medium passed messages:

her soldier son was in pain no more;

she would see and hold him once again

forever in the light beyond. The matter

was off limits in the one bedroom flat.

 

She made cream cheese in a muslin bag

she hung from the cold tap in the kitchen

to make it set. The whey would drip through the night,

minute by minute, hour after hour.

When she made apple strudel the flat

was aromatic with cinnamon.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ICONS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read2.2K views

From the restaurant terrace on the cliff top

at Agios Giorgios, Cape Drepanos,

we can see the small harbour below,

its sea wall curved like a scythe and, opposite,

the flat topped, steep sided, uninhabited

islet of Yeronisos, ‘Holy Island’ –

set today in that special, placid blue.

Folk tales have Greeks, after the fall of Troy

and exiled from home, land there and build

a temple to Apollo. Excavations

suggest the sanctuary was founded

by Cleopatra for Caesarion,

her son by Julius Caesar, the heir

she hoped, to Rome – Apollo being the god

of archery, knowledge, medicine, plague.

A few miles south on what, before the hotels

and villas came, was a deserted shore,

Colonel Grivas, Greek Cypriot ‘hero’

or ‘terrorist’, landed one November night

in ’54 to expel the British.

 

The restaurant is packed with middle class

local families in their Palm Sunday best.

After our mezze, fish fresh from the harbour,

we tourist St George’s church along the cliff –

a modern chapel-sized basilica

with its own square and drinking fountain.

We light a candle, as we always do,

more ‘good deed in a naughty world’ than faith.

A steady footfall of true believers

kisses the glass fronted icon of the saint.

A votive pink baby doll hangs from it.

Fifty yards inland, where there are ruins

of a Roman city, is a medieval shrine

to the saint – once a prayerful place for those,

Greek or Muslim, before Partition,

seeking love or strayed goats and donkeys.

 

On the fountain is a crude mosaic

of the Roman Soldier/Christian Martyr

slaying a dragon with its devil’s breath –

in Palestine, perhaps, or Syria.

Three leagues south is Aphrodite’s Rock

where the goddess was born among the spume.

Nowhere full of myth and history,

of irony and contradiction,

delineated by paint on wood

or finds in the earth or words in the air

is far from here over the bluest,

most changeable of seas.

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

PHILLIS WHEATLEY: 1753-1784

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read3.2K views

Enslaved in the Gambia or Senegal,
scholars surmise, she survived the nauseous
and violent bottom line of the
Triangular Trade to be bought aged eight
as a maid for his wife by John Wheatley,
merchant and tailor of British-ruled Boston,
a known progressive in education.

She was christened ‘Phillis’ after the slave ship
that took her childhood. She was prodigious
and was removed from domestic duties.
Tutored by his daughter, at twelve she knew
Latin, Greek, the Bible and, later,
became a genius of Augustan
couplets – their wit, their beat, their certainty.
With her master’s son, she went to London,
where her poems were published to some acclaim.
Her encomium to George Washington
was re-published by Thomas Paine. ‘Proceed…
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.’

Ah, how we tolerate unflinchingly,
unthinkingly absurd and absolute
contradictions – freedom and servitude,
enlightenment and doctrinal dogma!
‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.’

On Wheatley’s death she was freed – all that his will
left her: liberty without means. She married
a free black grocer. They lived in poverty.
Two infant children died. And yet she wrote –
but without white, male or titled patrons
was unpublished. Her husband was jailed for debt.
She supported herself and her sickly son
as a scullery maid. One December day
they died in squalor, were laid in unmarked graves.

What did she choose to remember of the seas
pounding against the timbers and the cries
and the chains days after days after days?
Or the drums into the night; or the smoke
from the cooking fires at dawn; the bright clothes;
the songs; her mother’s voice?

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE FALL OF EMPIRES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.9K views

On the manicured corniche between Elounda

and Plaka – before the balconied hotels

that rise up the mountainside tier by

expensive tier – is the Turkish Governor’s house,

abandoned for nearly a century.

We venture up the steep, pitted drive

but sudden howling from unseen dogs

deters. On the opposite side of the bay,

where only widows on donkeys go,

the shore is festooned with plastic bags

shredded by the tides and bleached by the sun.

The foundations of the antique city

of Olous shimmer beneath the water.

 

The French dug a canal, near the salt pans

the Venetians laid out, between the bay

and Mirabello Gulf. The Canal Bar,

ruined now – the owner’s wife died, his daughters

left to work in gift shops in Heraklion –

was popular with tourists, mostly Brits.

Elounda is populous with ex-pats.

Imperial Airways’ Short Brothers’

flying boats, en route from Southampton

to erstwhile Bombay, would refuel nearby

and passengers overnight at an hotel

in the town – among them Churchill, Ghandi.

 

From our table at Plaka’s Giorgos

Taverna, we are fanned by zephyrus airs

and see the deep blue of the bay and the isle

of Spinalonga – first a Venetian

then Ottoman fortress, then lazaret

(in effect, a leper prison) and now

a heritage site. Inmates sometimes

would swim for freedom across the bay.

The Werhmacht was stationed here. For sport,

soldiers would shoot, night or day, at fugitives.

 

We are eating grilled kefalos – mullet –

with aubergine au gratin and frites,

and drinking bottles of Mythos beer.

The couple at the next table are French. They are

treating their Spinalonga guide to lunch.

He speaks English. They do not. They ask us

if we speak French. We reply haltingly.

The young waiter, who is Albanian,

steps forward, deferentially. He informs us,

modestly, in the relevant languages –

that he speaks some English, French and Greek.

Emboldened by our immediate respect,

he tells us he is a first class graduate

of the modern language faculty

of the University of Tirana.

‘Balkans is no good now!’ he exclaims.

So exiles become polyglots. A youngish

Israeli family – father, mother,

twin girls – arrive. We hear the children’s

bubbling Hebrew while they all study

the menu outside. As they enter,

the waiter greets them in English. They respond.

 

 

 

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