Wales

THE KING’S WORKS IN WALES

By David SelzerJuly 28, 20170 Comments2 min read1.4K views

Edward I’s decision, announced on 17 November 1276, to go against Llywelyn as a rebel and disturber of the peace, had, as not the least notable of its consequences, the inauguration in Wales of a programme of castle-building of the first magnitude.

THE HISTORY OF THE KING’S WORKS, HMSO, 1963

Maître Jacques, castle builder from St. George,

Savoy, walked the crag’s perimeter

two hundred feet above the breaking sea

that would ensure supplies during sieges,

and advised the king in what was due course then –

a relay of messengers riding to

wherever the court was – to build at Harlech,

Welsh heartland, dominate that long coast,

be grander even than Caernafon or Conwy.

Carpenters, charcoal burners, diggers, dykers,

plumbers, masons, sawyers, smiths, woodmen,

quarriers and labourers – all from England –

together with Master James have ensured

the elegant, sturdy walls and towers

have lasted beyond Glyndwr’s uprising,

the Wars of the Roses and Cromwell,

though some of the limestone from Penmon

and most of the steel and iron from Chester

have been snaffled over time by locals.

Victorian tourists, informed by guide books

in the grand tour style about ruins,

could catch the Paddington train to Oswestry

then the stopping train to Barmouth, alight here,

take the pony and trap up the hairpin road

to the Castle Hotel facing the keep.

The hotel has been refurbished: on two floors

luxury apartments; on the ground floor

the visitors’ centre with time lines, a/v,

museum shop, and café where there is

Fair Trade coffee, speciality teas,

paninis, scones – and all day full Welsh breakfasts

very popular with local builders.

Pages:

By David Selzer

0 Comments

POETRY

WATCHING THE LAMBS

By David SelzerMay 21, 20153 Comments1 min read1.9K views

From the Ackermans’ seat near the lift bridge
on the Llangollen Canal – tree-lined
for the most part but open here – the view
has become a perennial favourite.
We watch cyclists, joggers, walkers pass,
and the narrow boats that have journeyed
from Nantwich, Dudley, Worcester – and we nod and smile.
But best of all in late March/early April
are the lambs on the pasture opposite
that rises, with occasional oaks,
gently to an escarpment that ends
beneath high limestone cliffs that sever the sky.

This part of Wales was once near the South Pole –
and has variously been: deep-sea mud,
crumpled, fractured by the movements of the earth;
a shallow, fertile tropical sea;
a swamp with giant mosses; a vast, hot,
featureless desert inundated by the odd
flash flood; an ice sheet shaping the landscape.
All gone in the shake of a lamb’s tail…

The ewes chop grass as if they were on piece work.
Their offspring thrust at them for milk or stare
at something new or lounge in the sun
or explore the barbed wire edges of our,
oh, so temporary world.

Pages:

By David Selzer

3 Comments

POETRY

RANDOMNESS

By David SelzerFebruary 24, 20152 Comments1 min read1.8K views

As we walk on the path by the Dee, glad
a low wall keeps us from the river in spate,
its white waters covering the flat rocks
that stretch half across the river’s breadth,
waters whose unvarying roar fills the town,
we see, coming downstream from Chain Bridge,
bounced erratically by the relentless
torrent, a child’s ball, plastic, red, bright as new.

Later, as we cross the bridge to climb the hill
to the Llangollen Wharf Tea Room for
a welsh rarebit with smoky bacon,
having assumed the ball would already
have left Wales, we see it, once more, caught
in eddies made by one of the buttresses
of an arch and the smooth rock it is built on.

As we re-cross the bridge, after we have
walked off the rarebit along the canal,
we see the ball again, stranded on the rock,
and hope a child in Bala or Corwen
has another now – plenty of time
to learn about physics.

Pages:

By David Selzer

2 Comments

POETRY

WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY…

By David SelzerFebruary 24, 20151 Comment1 min read1.5K views

…treat jostled treat: a wedding one day,
a memorial service the next… from casual
pretension to pretended casualness…
hired morning suits, fascinators… chinos,
backpacks… he was a great man… they’re such a
suited couple… he instantly recognised
my genius… they’ve lived together for years…
in a modest Georgian country house in Wales –
transformed to a wedding venue with bought-in
statuary… in a Camden Town pub
with asparagus risotto and rosé…
we celebrated something – money, luck,
aspiration, achievement? Someone died,
someone married, we were invited.
Nothing of joy occurred, nothing solemn.

Truly and beyond mockery, the sun shone
on the lawns and the distant, lovat hills –
and a gusting north wind threw the city’s dirt
against the etched windows.

Pages:

By David Selzer

1 Comment

POETRY