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ironies

POETRY

A PUBLIC MAN

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read454 views

i.m. David Robinson

 

At the celebration of his life –

in an erstwhile garrison church now

educational centre – there was music,

applause, laughter, sadness, his cardboard coffin

with red roses and his panama hat.

And it was as if he were there – as he was,

for sure, in the gathered memories

of the many present and the many,

in absentia, who had written.

The order of service commanded

‘All Sing The Red Flag’, and printed the words –

and most did, not just the comrades like us

who savoured and relished his serious joke.

 

Gathered outside in the soft May light,

greeting friends and colleagues then watching

as the cortège took its gradual leave, we

found ourselves applauding in that public place.

 

There are some you cannot believe are dead.

You would be unsurprised if they turned up

one day and continued a conversation

they had begun a week before, a decade.

So as I walk the Millennium Greenway –

part of the old Cheshire Lines railway

recycled (pun intended) – I can imagine

his cycling towards me, stopping, listening,

laughing richly at ironies then tell me,

with charm and gravitas, what I need to know.

 

 

 

Note: The poem was originally published in May 2015.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

A PUBLIC MAN

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read439 views

i.m. David Robinson

At the celebration of his life –
in an erstwhile garrison church now
educational centre – there was music,
applause, laughter, sadness, his cardboard coffin
with red roses and his panama hat.
And it was as if he were there – as he was,
for sure, in the gathered memories
of the many present and the many,
in absentia, who had written.
The order of service commanded
‘All Sing The Red Flag’, and printed the words –
and most did, not just the comrades like us
who savoured and relished his serious joke.

Gathered outside in the soft May light,
greeting friends and colleagues then watching
as the cortège took its gradual leave, we
found ourselves applauding in that public place.

There are some you cannot believe are dead.
You would be unsurprised if they turned up
one day and continued a conversation
they had begun a week before, a decade.
So as I walk the Millennium Greenway –
part of the old Cheshire Lines railway
recycled (pun intended) – I can imagine
his cycling towards me, stopping, listening,
laughing richly at ironies then tell me,
with charm and gravitas, what I need to know.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

PIPER LAIDLAW OF LOOS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read398 views

The Allies were waiting to go over the top

to attack a weak enemy position.

The British used gas for the first time.

Unfortunately, after a half an hour,

the wind changed and it all blew back

over the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

Unsurprisingly, the men were distressed.

Lieutenant Young called out, “Pipe them together,

Laidlaw, for God’s sake, pipe them together.”

And the forty year old veteran climbed

the ladder, tuned his pipes and marched back and fore

along the parapet, playing first

‘The Blue Bonnets O’er The Border’ – about

Bonnie Prince Charlie’s invasion of England –

and then ‘The Standard On The Braes O’Mar’ –

about the raising of the Jacobite flag.

He marched until shrapnel in his leg downed him

then, sitting, played on. And the laddies were

‘piped together’ and went over the top.

They were almost immediately

in enfilade from the German gunners

in an abandoned factory. Nothing

was achieved. No ground was gained or lost.

Piper Laidlaw VC died nearly eighty

and was buried in an unmarked grave.

 

This almanac of ironies is truly

beyond satire for something in this story –

and the paintings, photographs, footage

of other Pipe Majors playing the pibroch

on other parapets, in No-Man’s-Land –

moves to tears not laughter: certainly

the music – the chanter and the drone –

the selflessness, of course, and, perhaps,

the conviction that their history

and their traditions would transcend misfortune.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE SAME SHARED GROUND

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read339 views

Larks and herons rise from the same shared ground –

a salt-marsh sprinkled with scurvy grass

like early snow. A navigable channel

is impossibly distant, far-off as

childhood’s spring tides. Silt obscured endeavour.

Sailors and milkmaids and priests lie low

as the worked-out coal seams. Glaciers made this –

ice miles, thick as centuries, combing valleys,

teasing out hills, a slow explosion

of seas. I imagine, back in Europe’s

reticular forests, a homely,

mackerel sky caught in another’s vision –

ancient weathers, sand settling in a pool,

pebbles jarred momentarily, the shape

and sense of time.

 

Towing the continent,

hulks sailed west. Only fulmars passed. The past

stretches like a landscape from this instant,

encompassing it. The oneness of things,

their disparateness I taste like blood:

the jest at the heart – being here and now

who could so easily have been elsewhere

or no one. Oblivious of ironies,

soarers and coasters cohabit. The ice

was deep as mountains. I am shrouded in

imagining’s ponderous white oceans.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE SAME SHARED GROUND

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read723 views
Dee Estuary from Gayton Sands. © Sylvia Selzer 2009.


Larks and herons rise from the same shared ground –

a salt-marsh sprinkled with scurvy grass

like early snow. A navigable channel

is impossibly distant, far-off as

childhood’s spring tides. Silt obscured endeavour.

Sailors and milkmaids and priests lie low

as the worked-out coal seams. Glaciers made this –

ice miles, thick as centuries, combing valleys,

teasing out hills, a slow explosion

of seas. I imagine, back in Europe’s

reticular forests, a homely,

mackerel sky caught in another’s vision –

ancient weathers, sand settling in a pool,

pebbles jarred momentarily, the shape

and sense of time.

 

Towing the continent,

hulks sailed west. Only fulmars passed. The past

stretches like a landscape from this instant,

encompassing it. The oneness of things,

their disparateness I taste like blood:

the jest at the heart – being here and now

who could so easily have been elsewhere

or no one. Oblivious of ironies,

soarers and coasters cohabit. The ice

was deep as mountains. I am shrouded in

imagining’s ponderous white oceans.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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