Posts Tagged river
THE MEMORIES OF SLAVES
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on February 15th, 2011
On Overton Hill, an obelisk
in local sandstone marks the parish war dead.
Fresh graffiti partly obscure Worrall,
Egerton, Massey – names of Cheshire gentry,
villages, labourers. There is a solace
in landscapes, remorseless historians.
Below the hill, the town becomes a toy.
To the horizon, are laid out the pricey,
strategic illusions: refineries
distilling forests and the wide, poisoned
river narrowing to an ashen,
urban haze of broken streets, redundant wharves,
the memories of slaves.
ON THE NATURE OF THINGS
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on October 27th, 2010
From the terrace at Polesden Lacey, it was
the guttural calls caught our attention -
then sheep flowing fast over rising ground
like a pale yellow banner in the wind,
then the shepherd himself, then his dogs
flattening themselves at his command.
By the time we reached the valley bottom,
the beasts were penned – lambs from ewes,
the latter funnelled for the shearers.
The bleating drowned the whirring of the clippers.
From the high bridge over the Tweed at Kelso,
we watched a fisherman upstream cast
from a skiff – his companion sculling gently
to keep steady in the current – when,
suddenly, between us and the men,
who, of course, were facing the wrong way,
two salmon leapt from the river six feet
or more and, turning, re-entered the depths
silently. Oblivious, on those costly
waters, the ghillie rowed, his master fished.
CONFEDERATE CEMETERY, ALTON, ILLINOIS
Posted by David Selzer in Poetry on July 23rd, 2009
All of the names of the dead are Celtic
or English. Most of them died – in the prison
near the river -Â from typhoid rather than wounds.
Nobody set out to be cruel – farmers’
sons killing farmers’ sons. Their graveyard
above the bluffs was grassed, an obelisk built,
their names cast in bronze, bolted to limestone.
From the highway, there is no signage.
Eagles winter on the bluffs. America’s heart
is green and fecund: a confluence -
Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi.
THE OUTING
Each Armistice Day, she remembered it.
A walk along the riverbank. Her teacher took them -
one Saturday when the hawthorn was out
and the river slow after weeks of sun –
her and three of the other older girls.
Miss Davies’ young man came too –
in his uniform, on leave from the front.
When they all rested in the shade of a willow,
he unwrapped a large bar of chocolate
slowly, looking away, or pretending to,
across the river. Â Suddenly he turned.
‘Voila!’, he said, holding it out to them.
‘Pour vous. From plucky little Belgium.’
Miss Davies and her young man went and sat
at the river’s edge, their heads almost touching.
Two of her friends began whispering – another
pursed her lips and kissed the air. The others giggled.
She lay back – and squinted at the sun through the branches.
‘Look’, said one of the girls. The soldier was pretending
to dip the toe of his boot in the water.
Miss Davies laughed.
On the way back, ‘Listen’, he said, and they stopped.
On the dappled path, blocking their way,
a song thrush was striking a snail on a stone
again and again and again.
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