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Mycenae

POETRY

FLYING SOUTH

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read562 views

Ascending south east from Manchester, over

Eyam, the ‘plague village’, towards the Wash;

cruising over the Channel, observing

the shipping below me with wonder like some

latter day Bleriot; then Rotterdam’s docks

and the Rhine; sun glinting momentarily

like fireflies, and I am nonchalant

as Icarus, mindful as Daedalus,

noting place names freighted with histories;

past Munich, and the bared Austrian Alps,

then due south along the Balkan Mountains,

smoke drifting north from polluting fires,

roads following the contours, rivers the colour

of onyx; then the coast, and sea water

the westing sun has turned to mercury,

with Mycenae rightwards, leftwards Troy;

descending over the Dodecanese

to Cyprus – island of Aphrodite,

wine and olive trees, worked out copper mines,

abandoned churches – with its new money

and its old divisions.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE PROMONTORY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read458 views

At the landward end of the bronze age site

is a six storey apartment hotel;

right a broad sandy beach with amenities,

left, behind palms, cypresses and olives,

another hotel, vast as a cruise ship,

hiding the property development signs

in Russian and Chinese on the main road.

 

A peloton of young German students,

when we arrive, is being lectured

at the entrance to the museum –

an architect-designed, circular space,

subtly engineered into the sandstone,

with a green dome and copper plated doors.

A Cypriot copper oxhide ingot

is one of the exhibits. They were standard

in weight – and shaped always like a stretched

animal skin – throughout the eastern sea.

 

Precursors of the fictional Ulysses,

exiles, refugees from Mycenae

found this safe haven – with its thirty foot

sandstone cliffs and a fresh water spring

and its crow’s nest view of the sea, north to Troy,

south to Egypt, west to the Hesperides –

three thousand years ago. They survived pirates,

a fire, built defensive walls, stone houses,

but stayed for only two generations

before Hellenising the island,

exploiting its copper.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

AT MYCENAE 1984

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read798 views

Behind the lintel of the Lion Gate,

swallows had built their nest. Two Mirage jets,

burning Nato dollars, buzzed the valley.

A sweatstained, overweight American

squatted in the shade of the ashlar ramparts,

fanning himself with a bush hat. “Hey, which

pile of stones is this?” A veteran’s pension

kept him in exile. His mom and dad

had once stood arm-in-arm with that eager,

cropped marine recruit, who was altogether now

someone else. Thanksgiving and each birthday,

he would call collect. “This is the country

to screw up with your folks!”… He lies in the bunker,

smoking a joint. The black sergeant plays Hendrix

on his new Hitachi. From six miles

up the valley, NVA artillery

blow their minds… Parts of his skull were wired

like a broken vase. On the tourist bus,

his compatriots avoided him.

He smelt of despair, was a friend, a son,

brother missing in firefields of tattered

flags. Survivor’s guilt confounds. How he longed

to talk of Khe Sanh, how often spoke of

America! Swallows dipped above him,

under the gate. He did not look at them.

 

Note: this piece has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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