Posts Tagged comrades
VIRTUTIS FORTUNA COMES
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on August 28th, 2010
Stepping Stones, Kettlewell © SCES 2007
Lasting longer than the Thirty Years War,
than half our biblical shelf life, this marriage
has grown like coral – drops of the slain
Medusa’s blood – become, like Corallium
Nobile, a charm against fits, poison,
sorcery, whirlwind, lightning, fire, shipwreck!
From Norway’s fjords to the Cape Verde isles,
the Niger’s delta to the Orinoco’s,
reefs build, decline: the slow massing of
defunct algae, discarded oyster shells, lost
sailors’ bones; the unmarked ebb and flow
of topless towers, clayey tenements.
So, let’s celebrate chance, charity, courage –
Fortune’s inexorable comrades.
PARISH CHURCH, BURFORD
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on June 22nd, 2009
Hear them, silent on the leads,
watching their comrades,
the ensign, the corporal and the private
shot by firing squad
amongst the elms in the graveyard below.
Â
Under the leaves in the summer,
Cromwell’s New Model Army
was practising democracy,
selecting all ranks for exemplary death -
the only leveller.
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