THE HARE AND THE STONE
And suddenly she is a hare, eyes bursting
with fear. Her husband snaps her neck. Fingers
smell of tea towels and dust. Their son gobbles
at her nipples, his father’s eyes unfocused.
She dreads the key in the lock. Sometimes,
she wakes to find him thrusting at her crotch.
She is a hare, paralysed on a cold,
edgeless ground…Even through windows stuck fast
with paint, dust whispers, gathering on lips.
If, like a surgeon, she were to cut him,
she would lay bare a pebble, smooth as glass,
nudging his heart. It is his ambition
sometimes to be a stone.
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By David SelzerDINAS BRÂN, LLANGOLLEN
The path zigzags upwards to the keep, like
smoke or a hare hounded. Magpies lowfly
the gorse, bank to a clump of pine, barks pink
as coral. Ravens wheel. Birds and the wind
disdain the ruins peasants carted, raised,
razed and thieved. Before allegiances, walls
was this hill, that vast, limestone precipice
and, everywhere, silent, ancient waters.
Whoever sees the turf worn with walkers’
traffic and earth’s crust shining, whoever
looks across the vanished sea to the cliff’s
myriad catacombs will imagine the hoe
snick in the furrow, the clangour of arms
and the chough’s triumphant croak.
Defenders, tousled on the battlements,
watched fields sown, leaves fall, expected Saxons.
Foes were covert. A viaduct terminates
the valley and trim, mechanical
dynasties converge on the smoky plain.
The journey from Powys to the Five Towns
was all of sixteen leagues, as ravens fly,
a thousand years and such optimism.
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By David SelzerWE PRISONERS
A lark starting from the heather; a lamb
amazed by a heron; a hare gutted
at a turn in the road; the familiar path
obscured by fern, bramble, convolvulus:
the gallery in my head is open
all hours – by turns, thriving and derelict.
The sparrow in my chest, where my heart lay,
now flings itself at broken panes, now stills.
At the end of the pier, where steamships docked,
black-headed gulls and anglers watch and wait.
The steel-faced laughing man will read our stars.
Under the planking, the jelly fish glide.
My heart is a fist clenched in darkness,
a sea-anemone in coral waters.
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By David Selzer