David Selzer

THE ROAD TO THE WEST PIER

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Poetry 0 No tags

‘Everyone who knows the meaning of poverty, everyone who has a genuine hatred of tyranny and war, is on the Socialist side, potentially.’

George Orwell, THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER, 1937

“We have closed the door…to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party…We have turned our back on the dark chapter.” Kier Starmer, Labour Party Leader, MIRROR, 27th September 2021

‘Britain deserves better than this incompetence and total lack of leadership.’ Kier Starmer, Labour Party Leader, THE SUN, 2nd October 2021

A photo was released to the media

with a copy of his conference speech.

STERKFONTEIN CAVES

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Poetry 0 Guateng, South Africa

For Sizwe Vilakazi

An hour’s drive or so from Johannesburg

and Pretoria are limestone caves,

a depository of fossils,

a chance ossuary of hominids,

the so-called Cradle of Humankind, owned

by Witwatersrand University.

Our guide, the first time we visited, was Arnold,

a young man in his twenties, who had lived

all his life near the caves, and whose ambition,

since boyhood, had been to be a guide.

He showed us a pool and its blind reptiles –

WHITE PLAINS

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Poetry 0 'Brighter the A Thousand Suns', Albert Einstein's letter

My first time in Manhattan I was amazed,

walking down Madison from the Park.

Yellow cabs and subway trains from A to Z

I knew – but there were buses, a plenitude,

most seemingly destined not for The Bronx

or The Bowery but White Plains.

My ignorance pictured some far distant place,

almost Arthurian, in the Mid-West,

from where travellers might never return.

This was the city of Sipowicz,

Homicide Detective and Everyman;

of lives wasted in the garish,

PANTELLERIA

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Poetry 0 Agrigento, Arabs

The Carthaginians had a name for it,

and the Romans, the Greeks – the Arabs too,

Bint al-Riyah, Daughter of the Winds.

This mountainous, volcanic island,

with its stone tombs and obsidian tools,

lies between Sicily and Tunisia,

fifty miles from Agrigento, forty

from Sharik Peninsula – which was called

the Cape of Mercury when the sea

was Mare Internum, Mare Nostrum.

Smaller than Manhattan, with fewer people

than Peebles,

17TH OCTOBER 1961

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Poetry 0 17th October 1961, Algerians

My first term at Liverpool. Tuesday morning.

The professor of Philosophy’s lecture:

“All metaphysical statements are false,

or platitudinous”. My memory

of that October is of soft sun,

and clement shadows in the breezy

pollution of the river city.

***

Today, I have realised, that morning,

not quite four hundred miles due south east,

near the Pont Saint-Michel, under orders

from their chief, Maurice Papon, a Vichy

collaborator, police were beating

Algerians demonstrating against

torture,

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS Mary Clark: Writer

By David Selzer October 28, 2021 In Other People's Flowers 0 Children of Light, Community

David kindly asked me to contribute to ‘Other People’s Flowers‘. I’ve enjoyed his poetry for more than half a decade now, having linked up on LinkedIn. His encouragement while I was writing one of my more complex books, Community, was invaluable. Community is a political memoir, tinged with urban scenes and community activism. For David, though, I included several excursions into the art world, including a brief description of a book signing and reading at New York University’s student center in 1986. In it, Germaine Bree and actress Irene Worth read portions of Marguerite Duras’ work.

THE ROAD TO THE WEST PIER

STERKFONTEIN CAVES

WHITE PLAINS

PANTELLERIA

17TH OCTOBER 1961

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS Mary Clark: Writer

David Selzer

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