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Jews

POETRY

APOCALYPSE

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

Via Del Corso, Rome, March 2020.

The boutiques had been closed by decree, even

Calvin Klein Underwear and Brooks Brothers.

The only pedestrians were the Pope,

in his white robes, and his bodyguard,

in bulging suits – on a pilgrimage

to the ancient church of San Marcello

set back from the street. Beneath a crucifix,

used to assuage a 15th century plague,

Pope Francis prayed to God to stop the virus.

 

The street, in Roman times, was Via Lata –

Broad Way – and ran through the Field of Mars

towards the Adriatic. At Mardi Gras,

in the Renaissance, the Ghetto was emptied

and the Jews paraded along the street

so that the Christians could mock and scorn.

 

Italy’s churches had been closed by decree –

except in the north where some were being used

as temporary morgues, from which corpses

were taken, for cremation, day and night,

by slow convoys of army lorries.

 

Like riderless horses around a race track,

history repeats and repeats, and God,

who was thought to be dead, may merely be deaf.

 

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POETRY

OCTOBER 4TH

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

My first, and, so far, only – and that minor –

cardiac infarction fell on the date

of the sixty fourth anniversary

of The Battle of Cable Street, when the Jews

and the Irish stuffed Mosley and his Blackshirts,

the Old Wykehamist and his numbskulls,

the Daily Mail’s darling, a Great White Hope.

 

***

 

The consultant – of the old, aloof school,

and treated with awe by theatre staff –

liked Benny Goodman for accompaniment.

On a vast black and white monitor I watched

as, through my groin, the catheter sidled

the arterial highways to my heart.

How essentially anonymous we are!

They could have been anybody’s body parts!

I turned away, listened to the King of Swing’s

version of Bessie Smith’s ‘After You’ve Gone’ –

‘some day when you grow lonely your heart will break…’

 

***

 

Today is the eighty fourth and the nineteenth

respectively. There is no need, perhaps,

for barricades, and I have almost learned

the lessons of my heart.

 

 

 

Note: the poem was first published on 4.10.19 on Facebook .

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE MUSEUMS

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read1.9K views

For Sizwe Vilakazi

 

ROBBEN ISLAND, CAPE TOWN

 

Except when the Atlantic fog surprises,

from high ground in the city the island

is present like a leviathan,

its lights at night like white phosphorous,

a place of banishment since the first ships,

among seals and penguins.

 

DISTRICT SIX, CAPE TOWN

 

Razing its streets, clearing this cosmopolis

of Asians, atheists, Blacks, booksellers,

Buddhists, Christians, Coloureds, cooks, Hindus, Jews,

musicians, Muslims, seafarers, Whites,

this is what it was all about – the racial

myths, the scorn, the humiliation,

the torture, the killings – to justify

the theft of property.

 

APARTHEID, FREEDOM PARK, JOHANNESBURG

 

Beneath the Pillars of the Constitution,

in the gardens the weaver birds are knitting

their elaborate nests from grass and reeds

precariously over water.

 

Inside is the Mercedes workers hand built

for Mandela, and a BAE designed

troop-carrying Casspir, mine and bullet proof,

to patrol the townships.

 

HECTOR PIETERSON, ORLANDO WEST, SOWETO

 

When the school children took to the dirt streets

in their uniforms and walked as one

towards the dogs and the guns and the police,

did each of their rulers secretly know

they were finished – not then or that year

but in time however many they maimed,

and killed and tortured in front of cameras –

yet kept it to themselves? Did they believe

really that righteous anger would, could

be suppressed forever?

 

 

 

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POETRY

EZRA POUND IN VENICE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.8K views

‘But the worst mistake I made was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-semitism.’ Ezra Pound

 

Sitting in a traghetto, Olga Rudge

from Ohio and Ezra Pound from

Idaho – together fifty years,

from concert violinist to poet’s helpmate,

poet maker to fascist propagandist,

he, typically, with stick, wide brimmed hat,

floppy collar, she, wearing woollen gloves,

left hand clutching a large, canvas bag, right hand

a carefully folded scarf, dressed, like any

elderly woman, for a chilly day –

look away separately into the distance.

 

Five years before Pound’s death, Allen Ginsberg,

from New Jersey, on a sort of Grand Tour,

kissed him on the cheek and forgave him,

on behalf of the Jews, for his ‘mistake’.

‘Do you accept my blessing?’ asked Allen.

‘I do’, said Ezra. What closure! What chutzpah!

 

Held in a cage in Pisa, lit day and night,

jeered at as a traitor and a coward

by GIs who had battled from the south,

he wrote: ‘What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross’.

 

 

Note: first published on the site in June 2009.

 

 

 

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POETRY

GRASSALKOVICH PARK, BRATISLAVA

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

Yesterday was New Year’s Eve and the fountain

was drained to prevent too much merriment.

So the bronze, nude young ladies disport themselves

in dry, cold air. The equestrian statue

of Maria Theresa, mother

of sixteen, and the last of the Holy

Roman Empresses appears unamused,

though whether by the municipality’s

actions or the girls’ appears unclear.

Last month’s heavy snow remains in small,

sheltered drifts behind occasional trees.

What was an Hungarian aristocrat’s

formal palace garden in the French style

has become – by dint of many wars

and a few revolutions – a public park,

where my granddaughter, descendant of Celts,

Jews and Vikings, a competitor, sprints

on the white, gravel paths.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE GHETTO

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.6K views

We came here more than twenty five years ago

but know when we reach the Trei Archi bridge

we have gone too far and turn. (Distracted by

a young black man begging with a baseball cap

we had walked passed the sottoporto

where the curfew gates had been). We see

a man in a keppel show the entrance

to his children. Inside the Old Ghetto now

are information points, and a café

and a restaurant with kosher options.

In the New Ghetto’s spacious campo

are more eateries, and an accordionist

panhandling alfresco customers.

Stone benches have been placed, shade trees planted.

A patrol of three armed soldiers passes.

 

There is a generic memorial

to the Holocaust, and one to the transports

from the ghetto, the last including the sick

and the dying. Though the Doge et al

chose to believe Jews were as one there were

many languages and five synagogues

– three Ashkenazi, two Sephardi.

All waterways led to Venice, all winds

were fortunate for this cosmopolis.

Distant cousins of mine might have crossed

these pavings, disappeared into the fire.

 

A waitress blows a kiss to one of the soldiers,

the youngest, as they patrol again.

I think of the Prague Ghetto, its graveyard,

its leaning grave markers dotted with small stones.

Though we are never far from the sea

there are no pebbles here.

 

 

 

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