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POETRY

FAITH

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.8K views

Today there are at least two of the so-called

great religions of the world represented

on the beach. ‘By their raiment shall ye know them!’,

or some such: a troop of evangelical

Christians in genderless red tee-shirts;

two family groups of Hasidic Jews

in head scarves, dresses, kippahs, prayer shawls

as required. An adolescent girl passes

in a shalmar kameez, which makes the tally

three. Poised with a net by the rock pools

is a young man in a yellow turban. Four!

A quartet of elderly women

in saris stands at the edge of the sea.

They might be Hindus – or Sikhs, or Muslims,

or Jews, or Christians, or Buddhists, or Jainists,

Taoists, Zoroastrians, Humanists!

What creative creatures we humans are –

or what a jokey shape-shifter God is!

 

Pleasure beaches like city squares are

unsafeguarded places where complete strangers

mix haphazardly close to, far off, as chance

dictates. This strand must be ranked as safe

by minority ethnicities

and people of colour. No one seems

circumspect or aggressive. Is the

seeming vileness of this kingdom, the

hateful and contemptuous claims of

divisiveness virtual not actual?

Is this the Big Lie of facile pundits

and celebrity snake oil politicians?

Is the peaceful joy of this ordinary

summer’s afternoon illusory?

 

As the wind-breaks begin to be rolled up,

chairs snapped shut, towels shaken the crows arrive

monstering aside the black headed gulls

whose environment this properly is.

They take whatever chancy pickings they can,

haram or kosher.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CONTAGION

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

‘O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe,  and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ Francesco Petrarch

 

Somewhere near the estuary of the Don,

with its mudflats and meanders, north

of the Sea of Azov, and somewhere

near the Volga Delta, with its pelicans

and flamingos, north of the Caspian,

on the steppe lands are black rats and fleas

and yersinia pestis. The rats

like human warmth, and the fleas can leap.

 

The Mongol khanate of the Golden Horde,

recently converted to Islam,

had closed the Silk Road for religious reasons.

Italian merchants in Kaffa, Crimea,

notwithstanding held their fort. The Mongols

besieged the Christians and, withered by the plague,

so it is said, threw the corpses of their dead

over the ramparts. The merchants decamped.

 

The bacterium was borne along trade routes –

in holds of ships and folds of clothing.

In eight years the Black Death killed fifty million.

There was collateral damage – in Strasburg

and all of Rhineland the burning of Jews.

It probably brought about the end

of the feudal system, and undermined

the Pope’s domination, making the world

free for capital, enterprise and invention –

like mariners’ astrolabes, matchlock guns,

the Atlantic Slave Trade.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

SAUDADE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views
'Saudade', Almeida Junior, 1899
'Saudade', Almeida Junior, 1899


 

We sheltered in the lee of the lighthouse

at what was once the end of the world,

the caliphate, for half a millennium.

Lovers still, we watched the squall move eastwards,

obscure the Sagres promontory –

whose fort’s white walls hold the Navigator’s

stone anemometer: shaped like a compass rose,

big as a bull ring, grooved like a millstone.

His caravels outflanked Islam, rounded,

at last, Cape Bojador and made the Slave Coast.

Below us, hunched in crannies on the cliffs,

their rods like jibs, their lines like skeins, anglers –

descendants of Phoenicians, Romans, Saracens

– waited stoically for bass or bream to rise.


 

The rain lifted. A container ship passed.

Drake, Nelson, and Browning passed: ‘Nobly, nobly,

Cape St Vincent to the North-west died away

…how can I help England?’ In Ireland,

the black rot was already in the fields –

the coffin ships all ready in the roads.


 

Later, drinking wine the colour of sea grass,

in O Retiro do Pescador, we

watched our black bream split, salted, sizzled, served

with sprouts. Ah, home thoughts! And Mrs. Browning:

‘…a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

“Guess now who holds thee?”  “Death, I said.”‘ We

smiled, as lovers do, and gossiped, as

lovers do, about our fellow diners

sotto voce: aging Caucasians

and a young Chinese couple with a child.

Somewhere, a radio played fado softly.

‘”Death”, I said. “Not death, but love.”‘

 

 

 

 

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