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Gubbio

POETRY

GUBBIO

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read553 views

These ancient hill towns were built for defence.

Old houses in this one have two entrances

side by side: one wide for friends, one narrow

for foes – la porta dei morti.

 

A platoon of the retreating Wehrmacht

stopped here to murder forty partisans

at the bottom of the town by the high road,

in the square where the tourist buses turn –

Piazza dei Martiri Quaranti.

 

Though this is Umbria and February

is mild, wood smoke seasoning the windless air,

the cold in the Duomo is wintry still,

its paving chilling the bones of our feet.

Hanging above the ornate stone altar

is a wood carving of Christ crucified.

We emerge into brightness, and imagine,

in the eastern haze, the Adriatic.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

RIVA DEI SETTE MARTIRI, VENICE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read472 views

If you stroll far enough, long enough eastwards

on Riva Degli Schiavoni (Shore

of the Slaves) – before it was a wide,

stone promenade it was sand and mud  –

stroll away from the crowds, past the Danieli,

the Arsenale, the vaporetto stops

and beyond, with San Georgio Majore

across the Bacino Di San Marco –

you come to the Shore of the Seven Martyrs,

where now private yachts and small cruise ships dock.

 

It was the Riva Dell’Imperio –

built by the Fascists in the ’30s –

when the German Kriegsmarine torpedo boats

moored there. The officers were partying

one July night – the carousing loud

through the blacked out canals – when a sentry

disappeared. A crowd of hundreds was forced

to watch the seven murders – men who were

already incarcerated – and children

forced to clean the blood from the stones. Later,

body unmarked, lungs full of sea water,

the sentry’s corpse washed up against the oak piles

that keep the city safe in the lagoon.

 

Nothing extraordinary here. There are

two other sites in Venice, many more

throughout Italy, with greater numbers –

like the bus exchange in Gubbio,

Piazza Dei Quaranta Martiri,

or Rome’s Adreatine massacre.

Nothing remarkable anywhere perhaps

given half a million Italian war dead

except mostly, despite the witnesses,

the crimes are unpunished.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

SEASONAL GREETINGS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read379 views
Door, Marrakech © SCES 2009



GUBBIO, WINTER 1992


Where the tourist buses turned, the Werhmacht

had murdered partisans – La Piazza

di Martiri Quaranti.  The cold from the hill –

old, old rock – rose from the cathedral’s floor

into our very soles. Outside, February seemed mild,

seasoned with wood smoke. We bought a hand thrown,

hand painted jar with an ill fitting lid.


Since then: earthquakes, marriages…



GUILDFORD, SPRING 1998


Beneath the new Dillons in Guildford,

a mediaeval chamber, disclosed

during the refurbishment,

had been preserved.

Some archaeologists claimed

it was built as a synagogue:

others denied it.

Dillons’ MD was a Jew

the local paper informed us.


The peoples of the book misread each other.



THE CAPTAIN TILLY MEMORIAL PARK, QUEENS, SUMMER 2001


The Goose Pond was green with insecticide:

the West Nile mosquito threatened.

Named for the scion of a local family –

mutilated by Filipino freedom fighters

a century before – the Park was playground

for the replacements of the ‘teeming masses’:

Hispanics, Afro-Caribbeans, Asians.


From Memorial Hill, you could see the Twin Towers.



HOOLE, AUTUMN 2009


Two aging lovers, best friends in all the world,

orphaned late in life, walked circuits of the park

for their hearts; smiled at mums pushing buggies, scowled

at druggies near the gate; talked of ghosts and hope –

and jokes: ‘What’s this fly doing?’ ‘Waving, waving!’


Old lovers count their blessings, side by side.

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