David Selzer

AT CHESTER CROSS

By David Selzer June 29, 2018 In Poetry 2 Castra Deva, Chester

I am standing near the loud evangelists

by the medieval sandstone cross that marks

the centre of this erstwhile Roman camp,

Castra Deva, base for two centuries

of the Twentieth, Valeria Victrix –

streets south and west to the Dee, east to forests

and the lush plain, north to sandstone outcrops.

The Presbyterian rhetoric

of Damnation and Sweet Jesus keeps

other spectators away, gives me

a clear view of the midsummer,

pagan parade –

A NEW YORK TALE

By David Selzer June 29, 2018July 4, 2018 In Poetry 3 Bleecker Street, e.e. cummings

Though they lived for decades no more than a block

from each other in Greenwich Village – one

in Washington Square, the other Patchin Place –

there is no record they ever met,

Hopper the painter, Cummings the poet.

They would have thought that they had nothing

in common – the real, the lyrical.

But, hey, what do geniuses know?

They may have passed each other on some sidewalk,

on Sixth Avenue or Bleecker Street,

or in the subway on 9th,

LEVITICUS

By David Selzer June 29, 2018 In Poetry 1 Belarus, Chester

As we travelled back from a London weekend

in the Quiet Zone on the afternoon express

three very young, head scarved mothers nursed

their newborns and chattered softly all the way.

At Chester they headed for the North Wales train.

Not far from the Great Orme Tramway Station,

Church Walks, Llandudno, and near St Georges,

is a three storey detached house whose ground floor

has been a synagogue for a century

and more. Lubavitch rabbis officiate.

Above the shul,

RESURRECTION

By David Selzer June 29, 2018 In Poetry 0 a cappella, Austro-Hungarian

Our house, the street’s first, was built epochs ago

on Cheshire pastureland. There has been nothing

for history to note here – only births, deaths,

the occasional fire and break-in,

and marriages at the Methodist Church

almost opposite us. Empires collapsed

from within – Austro-Hungarian,

British, French, German, Ottoman, Russian,

and Soviet. Here only the seasons came,

and bed-sits, then gentrification.

Now the St Petersburg Resurrection

A Cappella Choir – founded post-Gorbachev

to sing the liturgy in concert halls –

A DEATH IN GASCONY

By David Selzer June 29, 2018 In Poetry 2 'La Vie En Rose', Auch Coeur de Gascogne

We flew late, on the year’s busiest Friday,

to Toulouse. As we drove in the hire car

through Haut-Garonne and Midi-Pyrénées

into Gascony, its rolling hills green

with August’s growth, the sun was setting –

the burgeoning fields of sunflowers paused, bats

swooped before the car like twilit angels.

As we topped each rise we could see the glow

fade in the west above the Bay of Biscay.

We arrived in darkness at the pension.

The patronne gave us supper on the terrace –

HARRY POTTER AND THE NORTHERN LINE

By David Selzer May 25, 2018 In Poetry 4 'A Jar of Sticklebacks', 'Elsewhere'

The timetabled rumble of the Northern Line

between King’s Cross and Euston stations

moves beneath the British Library’s

‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’.

Aficionados like my granddaughter

are oblivious, focused on the wonder

of ancient texts and modern images,

the alchemy of ink, pigments, alphabets

transformed into art. Between trains there is

the clip-clopping of Centaur’s hooves.

We walk to King’s Cross to see Platform

9¾. People are queuing

to take selfies beneath the sign attached

to the wall next to The Harry Potter shop.

All Posts By David Selzer

David Selzer

AT CHESTER CROSS

A NEW YORK TALE

LEVITICUS

RESURRECTION

A DEATH IN GASCONY

HARRY POTTER AND THE NORTHERN LINE

David Selzer

Categories

Recent Comments

A DEATH IN GASCONY

AT CHESTER CROSS

A NEW YORK TALE

LEVITICUS

A NEW YORK TALE