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madness

DARK SOUL OF THE NIGHT

By David SelzerApril 25, 20141 Comment1 min read1.8K views

‘Oh the mind, mind has mountains.’ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Death ends but not every day dies with sleep.

Engines grind down at the darkened cross roads –

passengers tilt forward, cargoes shift –

then – headlights sweeping the room’s bare walls,

slashing the night – accelerate out of reach:

goods secured, people insouciant.

In the silence, in the empty stillness

that follows, I am awake, restless, waiting

then nightmared. I cannot control, resist –

whatever they are – ordinary thoughts,

admonishing angels, sheer demons. They

scale me, plunge me… Next day, all day, I feel

I have been in madness.

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By David Selzer

THE CURE OF FOLLY

By David SelzerOctober 29, 20120 Comments1 min read1.3K views

THE CURE FOR MADNESS — ‘The Cure of Folly’ by Hieronymous Bosch, circa 1490

Here is a cure for madness. The patient,

stupid with pain, credulity or

the random gaze of the mad, the distraught, looks

in our direction. He is being trepanned.

The surgeon, having pierced the shaved skull,

looks modestly away. A monk with a jug

of wine or of water and a nun

with a closed book gesture to the consultant

as if to say, “Thus perish all follies”.

A white horse gallops through an orchard. Sheep graze.

A distant gallows is occupied.

Where the landscape ends in blue hills, steeples

rise in an empty sky.

Note: The poem was originally published on the site in December 2011 – https://davidselzer.com/2011/12/

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By David Selzer

THE CURE OF FOLLY

By David SelzerDecember 27, 20110 Comments1 min read1.4K views

THE CURE FOR MADNESS — ‘The Cure of Folly’ by Hieronymous Bosch, circa 1490

Here is a cure for madness. The patient,

stupid with pain, credulity or

the random gaze of the mad, the distraught, looks

in our direction. He is being trepanned.

The surgeon, having pierced the shaved skull,

looks modestly away. A monk with a jug

of wine or of water and a nun

with a closed book gesture to the consultant

as if to say, “Thus perish all follies”.

A white horse gallops through an orchard. Sheep graze.

A distant gallows is occupied.

Where the landscape ends in blue hills, steeples

rise in an empty sky.

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By David Selzer

LAMENT FOR BERSHAM IRON WORKS

By David SelzerJuly 22, 20114 Comments1 min read2.1K views

Not for the hard, life-denying graft of it

or the danger, not for the polluting smoke

or the banishing of bird song,

not for the exploitation and social

upheaval, least of all for its cannons

at Naseby, Bunker Hill, Waterloo,

but for its madness, the sheer reach of it,

the invention of it, the ambition,

the defiance, the rhythmical creak

of the horse-drawn gin pumping water

from the river, the sulphurous roars

of the furnace, the forge hammers pounding

through the ancient woods, along Offa’s Dyke,

their echoes dying…

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By David Selzer