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Guildford

MONKS AND TOURISTS

Sheltering from a summer shower

beneath the portico of the Tunsgate Arch,

Guildford, I looked down the steep High Street

towards the bridge over the River Wey

and saw three bespectacled Buddhist Monks

emerge from Dolland & Aitchison and,

lifting their saffron robes, run to Jigsaw.

 

Enjoying my pan fried sea bass and Guinness

in The Faulkner, Hoole, and watching the rain

trickle down the Walker Street Co-op’s facade,

my view was suddenly blocked by a coach

from which a party of middle aged

Japanese tourists descended and,

brollies hoisted, ran over the road

to The Bromfield Arms with its vending machines,

flat screen tvs and menu of ‘Pub Classics’.

 

When I was a young man I assumed wonders

had to be travelled to: Maldon, Marseilles,

Moose Jaw, Machu Picchu – but now I know

you only have to stand and wait or sit.

 

 

 

AT PEAK’S POND, GUILDFORD CASTLE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read278 views

The castle was one of the first the Normans built.

Its earthen motte rises some fifty feet

or so above this late Victorian pond –

the keep, with its Romanesque windows,

built from local golden Bargate stone and strips

of knapped flint for decoration, fifty more.

As yet she is innocent of all that –

only what moves, makes noise, can be held, climbed

or eaten: like the lemon drizzle cake

a pair of lovers offers her; like the steps

by the pond she ascends and descends;

its railings; the quack-quacks; a helicopter;

the solar powered fountains, whose comings

and goings she points at excitedly.

And the people, who all, multi-ethnic,

cross-generational, reciprocating or not,

deserving or otherwise, receive

a pristine smile and a disarming wave

from within these ramparts.

 

 

 

SILENT POOL, MARCH 2013

The pool is off the Dorking-Guildford road,

at the foot of the North Downs; is fed

from a spring, which seeps through chalk and flint;

is so-called for allegedly no birds sing

in this glade of ash, oak and yew;

a place of legend, of Druidic worship,

rumoured deep enough to drown secrets.

A sharp March wind rattles twigs and branches.

 

By the side of a flint pathway – that leads

to the top of the Downs with its Pilgrims’ Way,

an old drovers’ road – is a second world war

‘pillbox’, its unadorned and concrete

symmetry stark, a forgotten reminder

of fears of invasion from Bonaparte

to Hitler – not without reason in this land,

like many, pillaged over and over.

 

Edward Thomas, after his breakdown,

cycled westward, a century ago,

from Clapham to the Quantocks in pursuit

of spring in turbulent weather like this.

That laureate of the moment – the hoot

of an owl, grass stilled in the heat – briefly stopped here

the year before he wrote his first poem,

two years before he enlisted, three

before a shell blast killed him at Arras.

 

 

SEASONAL GREETINGS

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.