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POETRY

THE RABBI AND THE EMPEROR

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.9K views

In the summer of 1913, the last

Habsburg Emperor made a state visit

to Pressburg – later, after The Treaty

of Versailles, renamed Bratislava.

One photograph shows his open carriage

stopped in front of the Pressburg Yeshiva,

whose students came from every part

of the Empire. Franz Josef leans forward

to speak to Rabbi Akiva Sofer,

whose great grandfather founded the school –

two dynasties talking briefly together.

 

During the rule of the Communist Party

most of the erstwhile Jewish quarter was razed

to build a four lane bridge across the Danube.

After independence a memorial

to Slovakia’s murdered Jews was placed

on the site of a shul. The word ‘Remember’,

in Hebrew and Slovak, is engraved

into the black marble plinth. Often

little stones are placed haphazardly

on the marble as is the Jewish custom

and tradition: pebbles of mourning,

of safekeeping of souls, of memory.

 

In the streets and the squares were unremarked

small stones – where the Rabbi was waiting,

where the carriage wheels turned.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE RULES OF THE GAME

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read1.7K views

I had my first hair cut when I was three.

(I had been tricked, bamboozled, farfirt).

My grandpa took me to his barber’s –

redolent with banter and tobacco smoke –

near the junction of Cricklewood Lane

and Finchley Road. It was frequented

by his card playing cronies. I watched him

have his hair trimmed and some strands combed over.

I was invited to try the high chair

but, no sooner there, I was begowned

and the scissors flashed. ‘Fetch a policeman!’

he always claimed I called out. I imagine

a shop full of Jewish refugees laughed

uneasily at my accidental vits.

 

He smoked Craven A in an ebony

cigarette holder, drank tea from a glass

with a silver plated handle and snacked

on Rakusen’s matzos coated with

Colman’s French Mustard. When I was eight

he taught me to shuffle a deck of cards,

perfumed with nicotine, from hand to hand

then thumbs and forefingers like a croupier.

He taught me Gin Rummy where the twos

of any suit are also deuces and wild

like the jokers. We could choose whether aces

were high or low. I liked the black cards best.

 

When we were playing he would sometimes pause

to tell me stories: of Kiev; his escape

from Russia; my father; my grandmother.

We continued to play well into my teens.

There were questions I did not know how to ask

and ones then I simply did not know to ask.

I pass the tiny tales on like pieces

of a mosaic. ‘Remember’, he said,

‘for patience whichever way you shuffle

first the jokers remove!’

 

 

Note: first published 2016.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE RULES OF THE GAME

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read1.7K views

I had my first hair cut when I was three.

(I had been tricked, bamboozled, farfirt).

My grandpa took me to his barber’s –

redolent with banter and tobacco smoke –

near the junction of Cricklewood Lane

and Finchley Road. It was frequented

by his card playing cronies. I watched him

have his hair trimmed and some strands combed over.

I was invited to try the high chair

but, no sooner there, I was begowned

and the scissors flashed. ‘Fetch a policeman!’

he always claimed I called out. I imagine

a shop full of Jewish refugees laughed

uneasily at my accidental vits.

 

He smoked Craven A in an ebony

cigarette holder, drank tea from a glass

with a silver plated handle and snacked

on Rakusen’s matzos coated with

Colman’s French Mustard. When I was eight

he taught me to shuffle a deck of cards,

perfumed with nicotine, from hand to hand

then thumbs and forefingers like a croupier.

He taught me Gin Rummy where the twos

of any suit are also deuces and wild

like the jokers. We could choose whether aces

were high or low. I liked the black cards best.

 

When we were playing he would sometimes pause

to tell me stories: of Kiev; his escape

from Russia; my father; my grandmother.

We continued to play well into my teens.

There were questions I did not know how to ask

and ones then I simply did not know to ask.

I pass the tiny tales on like pieces

of a mosaic. ‘Remember’, he said,

‘for patience whichever way you shuffle

first the jokers remove!’

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ALL SOULS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.7K views

Through a windy night, busy with fireworks,
we walk to Hoole community centre –
a Victorian elementary school –
for a friend’s fiftieth. There are songs
of love and heartache and hope. I watch the moon
white-faced move from pane to pane. My mother
and her two sisters were schooled here when the limes
in the yard were straight and slender. (My aunts
were destined for spinsterhood – one via
a married lover from Lockerbie –
my mother widowhood, her Jewish husband
buried in Ibadan). I imagine them
silent at their slates or skipping home
reciting loudly through the cobbled streets.
My dreams are always of departures.

 

 

 

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POETRY

LA PLACE DE LA LIBÉRATION, AUCH

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

In the centre of the square is a fountain –

an inspired, aesthetic roundabout –

a contemporary design, the numerous

jets spurting three or four metres from the setts.

On the way to the restaurant, she sees it,

and, of course, fascinated by water

in all its forms, tugs at her reins – but the cars

circulate heedlessly and, anyway,

we are guests. She tantrums.

 

Later, the fountains are turned off, traffic

is forbidden and la jeunesse takes over

with its skate boards and hip hop. By then,

she is asleep in her buggy. A marble

plaque records the one hundred and fourteen

Jewish men, women and children sent

to extermination.

 

 

 

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POETRY

REVELATIONS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

Marooned for three years, Ben Gunn was

‘sore for Christian diet’. He dreamt of cheese,

toasted mostly.

Doctor Livesey always had about him

a piece of Parmesan in a snuffbox.

When he heard about the dreams, he said,

‘Well, that’s for Ben Gunn!’

But we never find out if the ‘half mad maroon’ savours

the King of Cheeses.

Maybe he eats it and thinks of Cheddar.

I was walking up the Farnham Road in Slough.

I passed an off-licence run by Sikhs,

a general store selling Halal meat

and a Caribbean take-away.

In front of me, a youth  was walking.

From a pocket in his blouson,

he took a banana.

He meticulously peeled, gently ate it.

The empty peel hung from his left hand.

We walked.

When would he drop it, cast it to the gutter, fling it at me?

He stopped –

and placed the peel in a bin provided by the Borough.


On the end wall of the erstwhile refectory

of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie

– which is merely a stone’s throw

from where a mob of  Milanese women

mutilated Mussolini

and hung the corpse from a lamp post –

hangs Da Vinci’s ‘The Last  Supper’.

One day, a woman from Woodside, Queens,

asked the guide three timely questions:

‘These are Jewish men, right?’

‘This is the Passover, yes?’

‘So, where is the matzos?’

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