Archive for March, 2011
AT GAYTON SANDS
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on March 26th, 2011
Dee Estuary, Gayton ©SCES 2009
The sands now are out in the estuary
beyond a multitude of reeds and a
labyrinth of runnels, nearer Wales than
England. We walk along the old sandstone
seawall, side by side, looking up as we talk
towards that startling, empty horizon
– midway between Point of Air and Hilbre.
What confidence in the future to build
a sea defence as far as the next parish!
We make way for joggers and dog walkers:
at Cottage Lane, return to a built
horizon – Flint Castle on the distant shore,
Connah’s Quay power station where the river
narrows and Parkgate’s white houses straight ahead.
Always uplifting, always familiar,
never dull, neither shadow nor substance,
this is our fiftieth year strolling this
seaside resort deserted by the sea.
Will there still be a Nicholls’ ice cream each
before we head for home and a tub
of Mealor’s potted shrimps to share for tea?
SUMMERS OF VIOLENCE
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on March 26th, 2011
He came in winter, buzzing by the stove.
She fed him crumbs and butter. She was very
lonely. She liked his talk of summer,
grew perceptive as a fly. But in June,
when she still saw nothing, she squeezed her fist
and heard him scream. “I am the universal
suffering man, a sacrifice in
an empty room, reduced to a shadow
on a public wall, tearing my way
to the top in the bathhouse.” She called him
Gabriel. The night she was born bombs blitzed seeds
in her brain, a wild garden that flowered
in summers of violence.
MY UNCLE TOM
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on March 26th, 2011
With the six o’clock news on Thursdays,
Uncle Tom, smelling of sweat and sawdust, brought
the Dandy – and the Beano! Unlooked-for,
like a lodger, in the bare, spared room over
the hall of brasses and ‘Off Valpariso’,
bachelor Tom had no more substance
than Lord Snooty or Desperate Dan.
He had been gassed twice and died of bronchitis
the year the King died of cancer. I lost
his chisels, which he honed but never used,
one by one in the garden. I cannot
shape my memories into life. His tools
rust in a stranger’s earth.
REVELATIONS
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on March 26th, 2011
Marooned for three years, Ben Gunn was
‘sore for Christian diet’. He dreamt of cheese,
toasted mostly.
Doctor Livesey always had about him
a piece of Parmesan in a snuffbox.
When he heard about the dreams, he said,
‘Well, that’s for Ben Gunn!’
But we never find out if the ‘half mad maroon’ savours
the King of Cheeses.
Maybe he eats it and thinks of Cheddar.
I was walking up the Farnham Road in Slough.
I passed an off-licence run by Sikhs,
a general store selling Halal meat
and a Caribbean take-away.
In front of me, a youth was walking.
From a pocket in his blouson,
he took a banana.
He meticulously peeled, gently ate it.
The empty peel hung from his left hand.
We walked.
When would he drop it, cast it to the gutter, fling it at me?
He stopped -
and placed the peel in a bin provided by the Borough.
On the end wall of the erstwhile refectory
of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
- which is merely a stone’s throw
from where a mob of Milanese women
mutilated Mussolini
and hung the corpse from a lamp post -
hangs Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’.
One day, a woman from Woodside, Queens,
asked the guide three timely questions:
‘These are Jewish men, right?’
‘This is the Passover, yes?’
‘So, where is the matzos?’
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