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paradise

POETRY

CIRCUS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read504 views

Days after we had travelled east of Eden

we invented clowning and slapstick,

juggling and tumbling, magic and music,

and idleness to ease our banishment

from Paradise. So, for ninety minutes,

in this rare and aerial space of changelings

and kaleidoscopes, we watch acrobats

and clowns, conjurors and knife throwers turn back

the epochs as if pages in a book.

 

Like a sudden rush of snare drums, a brief

and heavy shower accompanies

the finale – but we emerge from the big top

into that special freshness after rain.

The church bell is tolling for evensong.

As if there were no sin, house martins

swerve and bank and twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

APPLES AT ERDDIG: A GLIMPSE OF AVALON

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read554 views

Beneath the rows of limes edging to yellow,

the air, tangible with precipitation,

appears almost emerald, a sea green.

 

In the border beside the high wall, which marks

the tended gardens from the unkempt woods,

there are blooms still. A bee gathers nectar –

and the black, turned earth ripples slowly

as a mole forages in the underworld.

 

***

 

Beyond ruined Troy, and north of Paradise

abandoned, from where our words began,

far over the plains and ranges of Europe,

on steep mountain slopes in haphazard orchards

are wild fruit the colour of blood and grass,

which travellers on the Silk Road – merchants,

conquerors, slaves – might once have eaten.

 

***

 

In the wooden barn where the tools are cleaned,

sharpened, hung, this year’s apples are displayed

in small pyramids: Lord Lambourne Dessert,

Gloria Mundi, Keswick Codlin,

Grenadier, Crimson Queening, Wise…

 

When the heavy doors are rolled back each morning

the air is overwhelmed with that keen, sweet scent –

as if Ynys Afallach, Isle of Apples,

Avalon were just below the horizon,

and landfall imminent.

 

 

Acknowledgement: Erddig [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/erddig] has inspired other poems published on the site, including THE OLD LIME TREES AT ERDDIG [https://davidselzer.com/2018/07/the-old-lime-trees-at-erddig/] and ERDDIG: REFLECTIONS ON PATRIMONY [https://davidselzer.com/2013/03/errdig-reflections-on-patrimony/]. The inspiration comes in part from the magnificent gardens, that have extended now to the car park where it is possible to leave your motor beside wild flowers. Glyn Smith, the Head Gardener, has kindly given me permission to publish the following:

 

PARADISE IN A PARKING LOT

 

A sea. Of cars.

Look discarded in a massive field of flowers, as a flow of drowned vehicles in a tsunami of rainbow colour.

A remembrance of our heritage; our little contribution. An added percent to a legacy of that once thought lost.

‘Ninety seven percent of our wild flower meadows have gone,’ before man’s hand.

But here waving. Definitely not drowning. Standing proud and defiant!

Adance with added insect life. Eyed and filed on the ‘cloud’ by dull, fleece clad pedestrians that can never shine as bright.

Just corn crop weeds, with a smile on their faces that are the true cups that cheer. Cheer for themselves. we cheer for and, take cheer from them.

The best car park in Britain?

 

Glyn Smith and garden team.

Head Gardener, Erddig Hall, Wrexham.

 

©Glyn Smith 2019

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

PAINTING PARADISE

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read613 views

If I were a painter – and I would have

so many memorable titles – I would paint

your garden in all its rooms and seasons:

across the high back wall spring’s coral pink

clematis; summer’s sword-leaved, red-flamed

crocosmia by the aquamarine

gazebo; the white, weathered table and chairs

and the acer on the dark-brick terrace;

plants inherited, self-seeded, handed on

in stewardship – a world compendium.

You are the architect, builder, labourer –

and only begetter: ‘Sylvia Among

Her Sonnets Without Words’.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

NO LESS LIQUID

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read521 views

‘Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind…’
CATS II, A.S.J. Tessimond

 

With your lithe delight, at the refuge for strays

and rejects, you and she chose each other

immediately. She had a white tuft

at her throat but otherwise was truly

sable; with Egyptian eyes – emerald,

unblinking, discerning; a sycophantic

charmer; an aloof dowager; a great

mouser, night or day, bearing carcasses

as reward for those that worshipped her.

 

She slipped away like water – though, seemingly,

she had become so street-wise sidling

through whatever wilderness she came from.

With such easy pickings in expansive

suburban gardens so close to fields

maybe she became insouciant.

Her feline subtlety was outmatched

by brute, human force – a car broke her neck.

 

***

 

On the large touch screen in the library,

while we are waiting for Grandma to join us,

you write, using its CAD facility,

many things, including your age – seven

and three quarters – and draw a picture

of your cat, a heart, then write your name

and hers. You turn to smile at me. They were wrong

the writers of Genesis. There is death

as well as birth in Paradise. When we lose

innocence and know the terror in the dark

or the light, we learn to mourn and grieve –

and forget to remember and smile.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments1 min read624 views

‘Senator Boethius is the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged as their countryman.’

Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

 

Dante and Beatrice saw Boethius –

the sixth century consul, chamberlain,

intellectual and family man –

in Paradise: one of the twelve shining lights

in the sun’s heavenly firmament,

along with Solomon and Aquinas.

 

Imprisoned in a tower for alleged treason

and under sentence of execution,

he wrote De Consolatione

Philosophiae, a dialogue

between himself and Lady Philosophy,

reflecting – he in prose, she in poetry –

on wealth’s and fame’s transitory nature,

on virtue transcending fortune: almost

glib, smug if it had been written in freedom.

His paragon, Plato, would have inspired him,

and Socrates busy in prison.

Did he act it out in his loneliness?

 

His assassins – who killed him, according to

conflicting accounts, with axe, sword, club, garrotte –

did not record his last words. He was murdered

on orders of Theodoric, his erstwhile

friend, king of the Goths and Italy.

He was venerated as a catholic

martyr, allegedly walking headless

in death, and a catholic theologian,

his revered writing influencing

Augustine, for instance, as well as Dante,

masters and servants of allegory.

He was without any superstitions

or Christian beliefs, and zealous

for the public good so might have found such

hagiolatry amusing – or merely

a sign of their dark times.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read448 views
The left, centre and right panels of the tryptch, ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, by Hieronymous Bosch circa 1510

 

Paradise flocks. Christ is blessing Adam, Eve

and, looking our way, us. We know, we

know – but a dirty trick to make evil

interesting! Lords and ladies teem: nude

armies on sensual manoeuvres.

In the nightmare, penis becomes knife, vulva

a cracked, open egg on tree-like legs –

and a man, elbow on the cut-away edge,

is unmoved. Hells’ punishments become our

crimes: towns burn; refugees drown; a man

is crucified in a harp. Hell’s commandants

play sonatas – and someone watches

and is indifferent.

 

 

 

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