Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Chirk Castle from the North, Peter Tillemans, 1725
As we walk up the steep driveway, stopping
for breath at the curve where the castle
comes into sight – raised to block the routes
through the Dee Valley and Glyn Ceiriog
to starve the Welsh – a beribboned Rolls
descends, bride waving, followed, on foot,
by the wedding party in straggles –
black suits and brown shoes, wispy wedding hats –
treading the incline with tipsy effort.
Majdanek 1945 Polish civilians and Russian soldiers
During the interval, after act three
of Glinka’s opera, ‘Ivan Susannin’ –
pre-revolution, ‘A Life for the Tzar’ –
Stalin would leave his box at the Bolshoi.
In the fourth act, Ivan, the peasant, lures
the Polish Army out of Smolensk
and into a profound, winter forest.
They are lost. In the last act, they kill him.
Deep in the Katyn woods near Smolensk, pines
darkened the clearing where thousands,
ON THE PONTE SAN ANGELO
Three roma children
on New Year’s Day kindle a
fire from last year’s leaves.
IN SEVILLE
After rain, a girl
struts her stuff flamenco style:
no one notices.
BY THE A3
Four chestnut horses
flick their tails in the shade of
a horse chestnut tree.
AT KOM OMBO
Crocodiles, Pharaohs,
Romans, French, Turks, British gone:
only tourists,
Pegram's Point, Cape Province, SA © Sylvia Selzer 2009
At her back, the South Atlantic’s rolling seas,
those ice blue waters, break, skittering
on the silver sands. Burgeoning with child,
she smiles for the camera, as always
optimistically. Mussels encrust the rock
she leans on, kelp bobs like seals on the foam
and Southern Right Whales blow almost out of sight.
Due west, across the unbroken miles,
is Buenos Aires and the teeming hectares
of the Americas.
South Stack, Ynys Môn, ©Sylvia Selzer 2009
Of course, by the time it’s my turn at the ’scope
the bugger’s turned its back. ‘It is a puffin,’
reassures the RSPB girl – and,
since she’s pretty and young, I believe
that what I see is not one of the teeming,
noisy, noisome, nesting guillemots,
razorbills or gulls. A hat trick: ageism,
sexism, anthropomorphism – plus
being churlish as a bear rather than
valiant as a lion.
Behind the lintel of the Lion Gate,
swallows had built their nest. Two Mirage jets,
burning Nato dollars, buzzed the valley.
A sweatstained, overweight American
squatted in the shade of the ashlar ramparts,
fanning himself with a bush hat. “Hey, which
pile of stones is this?” A veteran’s pension
kept him in exile. His mom and dad
had once stood arm-in-arm with that eager,
cropped marine recruit, who was altogether now
someone else. Thanksgiving and each birthday,
he would call collect.
PAINTING PARADISE
ORGANISED CRIMES
PAINTING PARADISE
WHAT IS IT THAT STARTS A POEM?
ARS POETICA