Stalin

POETRY

FROM AGINCOURT TO MARIUPOL

By David SelzerMay 26, 20223 Comments1 min read619 views

Much of the history of modern Europe,

from Agincourt to Mariupol,

seems to comprise ignorant, arrogant

purportedly Christian armies – some ragged,

most well financed – advancing, retreating,

slaughtering innocents, telling lies,

with brief respites for rearmament,

and victory’s parades and revenges.

Even respectable men who should know

better, scholars and poets, politicos

and hacks, pretend to be soldiers, to ‘Hear

the drums of morning play. Hark the empty

highways crying “Who’ll beyond the hills away?”‘

They broadcast the recruiting sergeant’s drum roll –

for volunteers to step up and play

one of humankind’s most ancient games,

border disputes and the massing of troops.

The Soviets created the famine

in Ukraine, as the British did in Ireland,

to chasten the natives, remove them.

Such holodomors need not just a Peel,

a Russell, snug in 10 Downing Street,

or a Stalin, secure in the Kremlin –

choosing which omelettes are on the menu,

which eggs, and how many, should be broken –

but hierarchies of aiders and abetters,

dutiful enablers of iniquity.

Pages:

By David Selzer

3 Comments

POETRY

THE MAKING OF HISTORY

By David SelzerMay 26, 20221 Comment1 min read453 views

Though both of his parents were Party members

they had him secretly baptised in case

Stalin died. They often spoke about

the Doroga Zhizni, the Road of Life,

the ice routes built across Lake Ladoga

each winter, under bombardment, to help

lift the siege of Leningrad. He spent

much of his childhood chasing after rats

in the bombed-out ruins of Peter the Great’s

once imperial city. Perhaps he was

playing at being Ivan the Terrible

routing the Tatars from Crimea.

He appeared, in middle age, to have discovered

the narcissist within. Now he is elderly,

possibly addicted to anabolic

steroids, allegedly the owner

of gold-plated toilets in a palace

on the Black Sea, perhaps the mafia boss

of his old cronies from St Petersburg,

apparatchiks in expropriation

and manipulation. Certainly he appears

to believe that what a bunch of Varangians

aka Vikings got up to on a stretch

of the River Dnipro more than a

millennium ago must determine

what happens now.

Pages:

By David Selzer

1 Comment

POETRY

BLOODLANDS

By David SelzerMarch 24, 20225 Comments1 min read619 views

‘In the very midst of civilised Europe…the existence

of an entire population is threatened.’ Anatole France et al, 1919

Ukraine, like all countries, is an invention;

an abstraction on a map; a conqueror’s

caprice; an accident of history;

an actual, continual pit of war,

occupation, partition, rebellion,

displacement, famine – and pogroms

under Chmielnicki’s Cossacks, the Tzar’s

Black Hundreds, the Soviets, the Nazis…

***

Until the Germans occupied Ukraine

my grandfather, a Tzarist refugee

in London, had had regular letters

in Yiddish from his parents and siblings

in Kyiv. After September ’41

no more arrived. Approximately

thirty four thousand Jewish men, women

and children – in two days – were shot to death

by the Germans and their collaborators,

the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.

Each fresh layer of bodies in Babyn Yar –

a ravine four miles from the city centre

and not far from the River Dnipro –

was covered by sand. As the Russians

advanced, re-occupying Ukraine,

the SS attempted to remove

the evidence by exhuming the corpses,

burning them, and scattering the ashes

on neighbouring farmland. Though the odd

piece of bone or necklace turned up, Stalin

ordered the massacre kept secret,

to pretend the retreat had never happened.

***

Before the latest invasion you could

book a tour of the Jewish sites of Kyiv –

the five synagogues, Golda Meir’s birthplace,

Babyn Yar – for less than £50 pounds

per person. Included would be a

selfie with the driver.

Pages:

By David Selzer

5 Comments

POETRY

WITNESS THIS ARMY

By David SelzerNovember 25, 20163 Comments1 min read443 views

During the interval, after act three

of Glinka’s opera, ‘Ivan Susannin’ –

pre-revolution, ‘A Life for the Tzar’ –

Stalin would leave his box at the Bolshoi.

In the fourth act, Ivan, the peasant, lures

the Polish Army out of Smolensk

and into a profound, winter forest.

They are lost. In the last act, they kill him.

Deep in the Katyn woods near Smolensk, pines

darkened the clearing where thousands, thousands

of Polish officers turned to earth.

So many crimes unpunished, dead unnamed.

‘O, Polnische Kamerad, wo sind

der Juden?’ ‘Majdanek, Chelmno, Oswiecim.’

An epoch has the tyrants it preserves,

even for an eggshell.

Note: The poem was first published on the site in January 2010

Pages:

By David Selzer

3 Comments

POETRY

CIVIL WARS

By David SelzerJanuary 30, 20152 Comments1 min read396 views

After the horsemen and the slaves, before
the Stalins and the Hitlers, were the skilful
cities – cosmopolitan, pragmatic,
loud and solemn with towers, spires, domes.

There are some who would reprise a fictive past,
revert from countries of convenience
to imaginary nations, ignore
the corrupting legacy of empire,
the corrupted remittance of colonies,
oil trumping Crusades and martyrdom.

Europe could break like a slate across old
fault lines – a slate smudged with alphabets.
Europe could rub out its history.

There are swastikas in Brick Lane and Berlin,
lampooning in Paris and Soho.
When liberty is assassinated,
freedom is curbed by the rationale
of abhorrence, the politics of outrage –
Jews, Christians, Muslims, the conflicted peoples
of The Book confounded. So, whose Europe?

The cities are filled still with parks and squares.
Storks, pigeons, starlings roost above music
and commerce. After the horsemen and the slaves…

Pages:

By David Selzer

2 Comments

POETRY