Tag Archives

Hull

POETRY

ANGEL OF THE NORTH

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read282 views

At my back is Durham’s Romanesque

Te Deum. I turn my face to the sky

and this wonder – forged in a commonwealth

of system, iron and grace by private

genius out of public patronage,

on the grassed remains of a pithead baths.

 

Wherever you are in its vicinity,

in its line of sight, you can look nowhere else –

at its span, its height, it wings; at the

uncompromising power, unambiguous

vitality. When you look directly,

it is earthed but ready to soar – from your eye’s

corner, just about to take off or land.

 

It is rusting, except where children sliding

have polished its feet. It seems naturally

an ‘it’, not androgynous and neither

female nor male. It seems like the solar wind,

a flood tide, a stand of birches, winding gear,

a lathe, a mould. I read the graffiti;

note the engineers’ marks; count the rivets;

conjure the subtle, oh, gentle throb

of enormous wing beats; feel the skill,

the grasp, the joy; imagine the steady

tremor of turbines. Celebrating life,

prefiguring death, this weighty messenger,

this kind harbinger, welded like a ship’s

hull, embraces the air.

 

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments
POETRY

RITES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read381 views

That rite of passage of the middle class –

chauffeuring offspring to the varsity –

took us the breadth of England, from Hoole to Hull.

Extending her childhood, our parenthood

or both, we travelled the edge of hope

and longing, by acres of burning stubble

and slagheaps greening. In the rearview mirror,

she leant forward to gossip about

the future…When she was eight, we’d planted

her cherry tree, knowing she would one day

climb up it and out of sight. We watched it

blossom in her absence.

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

THE CITIZENS’ ARMY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read344 views

Dawn on the auto route and the surprise

of place names: Thiepval, Bapaume – Kitchener’s

nonchalant, Citizens’ Army rising,

at breakfast time, to walk unwaveringly

into the cross-wires of machine gun sights.

 

The First World War dead of Sharp Street, Hull,

have their own memorial – enamel

on tinplate behind glass with French, Haig,

Foch and Beatty like seraphs at its corners.

 

Through Flanders, there is a danse macabre:

graveyards are laid out like city streets, rows

of white and well kept stone.

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments
POETRY

LARKIN REVISITED

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments2 min read471 views

For Harry Chambers

 

After the posthumous exhibition

at the library, I walked with my daughter

(a student at Hull and sure she’d seen him once

in the lift) down Newland Avenue

to Pearson Park. I pointed out the house

where Larkin’s flat had been and told her how,

more than twenty years before, a  friend

and I had been persons from Porlock.

He’d answered the door in a dressing gown,

vest, grey flannels and, ruefully, let us in.

He was frying sausages for his tea,

he explained, before a bridge evening

with his secretary and her parents.

 

Nevertheless, with traditional jazz

in the background on his Pye Black Box,

he was very generous with the G & Ts,

shying the empty bottles, across the room,

to land unbroken in a basket full of

screwed-up typing paper. Nothing was said.

Our host seemed pleased rather than surprised.

 

In the loo was a print of Blake’s ‘Union

Of Body And Soul’ and a cartoon of

a pantomime horse, ‘Ah! At last, I’ve found you!’

 

Before our visit, my friend had sent him

one of my poems – as a calling card

or warning. It was more or less about

dancing. Larkin commented kindly

on the piece, mentioned he was writing one

around a similar theme. “Your fault then,”

my daughter asked, “The Dance unfinished?”

“Perhaps. But think of As Bad As A Mile,

‘Of failure spreading back up the arm…

The apple unbitten in the palm.’

Yet all those empty bottles landing

exactly where they were aimed in an

already cushioned environment.

So, a writer’s life exposed, irony,

‘the only end of age’ – or all three?”

 

Note: Two more accounts of the visit may be found in ‘AN ENORMOUS YES In Memoriam Philip Larkin (1922-1985)’, edited by Harry Chambers, Peterloo Poets, 1986 and ‘LARKIN AT SIXTY’, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber 1982 respectively

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
4 Comments