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refugees

POETRY

ONE WEEK IN JUNE: FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read5.7K views

 

News agency photographs are frequently,

by chance, unacknowledged legislators.

 

In the first – singly or in family groups,

some on foot, others in donkey carts –

displaced people are travelling north

along the shoreline. To their right, our left,

is a bombed-out multi-storey apartment block.

Beyond, seawards, are what might be tents.

In the far distance are the tall white chimneys

of the coal-fired power station in Ashkelon.

 

In the second photograph five children

are playing on the beach building sand castles –

two young boys, two young girls, and an older girl.

Behind them, perhaps fifty yards away,

is the Al-Baqa Internet Café.

 

The third is taken from the Israeli side

of the border fence – two rows of razor wire.

Beyond them are hectares of building rubble.

 

In the foreground of the fourth, two young men

are carrying humanitarian aid –

one in a wheelbarrow, the other

in his arms – from a UN centre

in Bureij refugee camp, which was

established in 1949.

 

Since the photographs were taken – not quite

two months ago – a 500 lb bomb

has been dropped on the cybercafé,

and ninety two children have been starved to death.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

OF CAT AND MOUSE

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read1.7K views

We do not have a cat. Consequently,
the neighbours’ cats disport themselves on our
property – one in particular,
a black and white, besmirching the rhubarb,
sitting hopefully under the bird feeder,
alert to the blackbirds hurriedly eating
the ivy berries far above, or,
like its prey, perched on the bird bath, licking
the water. A quick study – I appear,
it scarpers – though, as yet, has not mastered
the concept of windows so is startled
when I lumber gruffily into view.

We had a field mouse, found making a nest,
chewing an eclectic collection of
plastic carrier bags – Waitrose, the Co-op,
Carrefours, Duty Free at O.R. Tambo –
in the garden shed. Discovered, it looked,
unsurprisingly, like the mouse that
intimidated The Gruffalo
and we thought of our grand daughter – so carefully
let the little mother-to-be escape
into the bushes beneath the garden wall
and thence back into the wilderness.
We did cat sentry-go till the rustlings stopped.

Two refugees, neither welcome, both
easily killed – one escorted gently
to the border, the other hounded daily.
What moral, sentimental beasts we are!
The piebald cat, out of reach on the fence,
eyes me quizzically, head fetchingly
to one side, and I feel pity and guilt.

A week later, the cat continuing, meanwhile,
its incursions, I find, on the path,
exactly half a mouse – head, torso, front feet
upright as if it were springing from the stones –
its claws, in death, like fists.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ACCIDENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read1.5K views

A sudden heavy shower of summer rain

slows the early evening motorway

to a blood red blur of brake lights.

In my mirror, I see two cars collide,

career across the lanes – and others stop,

receding out of sight into the downpour…

 

I am thirteen and a half and tall for my age –

the year of Hungary and Suez;

am sitting on the red leather back seat

of an almost straight-from-the-showroom

Morris Minor (in the inexorable green),

having dined at Heathrow’s new, five star

restaurant and sampled hors d’oeuvre

and tasted Riesling for the first time;

am being driven back to Golder’s Green

by Yvette, the car’s owner, a fashion designer

and childhood friend of the other passenger,

Angela, my aunt, a night club pianist,

briefly home from Johannesburg –

both daughters of Tzarist refugees,

both light years from the Pale,

bleached blondes, smoking Sobranie

Black Russian in ivory cigarette holders;

am listening to these nubile women,

our daughter’s age now, talk acidly

of their exes, wearily of their dads

when a four door car, overtaking,

somewhere on the Great West Road,

comes seemingly too close and Yvette

swerves sharply right, her bumper

striking its fender with a metallic thump…

 

Fifty and more years later I forget

the dénouement. Certainly, no one died.

I think of you, somewhere perhaps without rain,

watching the sun set, perhaps wondering where I am,

why I am late, while I drive homewards.

 

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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POETRY

ACCIDENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.7K views

A sudden heavy shower of summer rain

slows the early evening motorway

to a blood red blur of brake lights.

In my mirror, I see two cars collide,

career across the lanes – and others stop,

receding out of sight into the downpour…

 

I am thirteen and a half and tall for my age –

the year of Hungary and Suez;

am sitting on the red leather back seat

of an almost straight-from-the-showroom

Morris Minor (in the inexorable green),

having dined at Heathrow’s new, five star

restaurant and sampled hors d’oeuvre

and tasted Riesling for the first time;

am being driven back to Golder’s Green

by Yvette, the car’s owner, a fashion designer

and childhood friend of the other passenger,

Angela, my aunt, a night club pianist,

briefly home from Johannesburg –

both daughters of Tzarist refugees,

both light years from the Pale,

bleached blondes, smoking Sobranie

Black Russian in ivory cigarette holders;

am listening to these nubile women,

our daughter’s age now, talk acidly

of their exes, wearily of their dads

when a four door car, overtaking,

somewhere on the Great West Road,

comes seemingly too close and Yvette

swerves sharply right, her bumper

striking its fender with a metallic thump…

 

Fifty and more years later I forget

the dénouement. Certainly, no one died.

I think of you, somewhere perhaps without rain,

watching the sun set, perhaps wondering where I am,

why I am late, while I drive homewards.

 

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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