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heaven

TITANS

As I was taking ice cubes from the freezer

in what was a garage and now is a shed

for motley matters – warm with early spring –

I heard, behind me, a frantic, aggressive

buzzing, like a high-pitched rattle. A large

bumblebee near the roof was partly caught

in a web. A hefty house spider approached.

They disappeared into darkness. The rattling

ceased. The bee returned alone into the light

but was trammelled in the web – and I,

a minor god of winter, with hoar frost

in my beard, observing a war in heaven,

was helpless like a mortal bystander

as that grand creature flew to its death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read381 views

With wind soughing in the churchyard yews,

lichen marking the gravestones of labourer

and landowner, Saxon foundations,

mediaeval tower, sunlight fitful

through worthy Victorian stained glass,

a brass plaque for ‘those who gave their lives’,

the wheezy organ, the orotund Order

for the Burial of the Dead, ‘I am the

resurrection and the life…’ the vicar’s

gentle eulogy of the deceased,

one is almost tempted to wish God

were in his heaven where ‘we shall all

be changed…in the twinkling of an eye’

but common sense prevails.

 

 

 

REPRISE

Window, KwaZulu-Natal © SCES 2006



This is a declaration of love

on August the 6th, our anniversary.

Here is your essence: the pathos of ink

pristine on domesday parchment makes you cry –

“Ah, bless them!” you say – not only the sad,

the halt but the deluded and the unmasked.

Wisely, you leave me few pretensions.

On Hiroshima Day, I celebrate

our forty four years with ephemera:

images of figures in landscapes;

walking an ancient copse full of wild

garlic and forget-me-nots, heaven’s colours –

and saying, “I love you”.