Winter moon,
Scythe cutting the evening sky,
White light
Shone through a torn curtain;
Far space overwhelms the Earth,
A fleck of dust in the vastness.
Ice on the road home
Glittering in the moonlight
A stark warning.
I tread warily
Head bowed
Hands thrust in sleeves.
It was much like this in February 45,
The Russians close to Berlin,
London still in darkness,
North Eastern France in flames.
Much ruined to no real purpose.
And now this snow bound February night,
In an insular town
In a self congratulatory country,
A full lifetime after the guns were silenced,
I sit and mourn for all that has been lost
From this troubled world,
This speck of rock
That we dare to call our home.
Whole cities razed.
Whole cultures lost.
The Polish cantor burned in a barn.
The Lithuanian professor
Frozen in irons.
Our family friend
Shot dead in Ravensbruck,
Shot dead for no real reason.
Nothing remained,
Nothing for us to touch,
Only her photograph
Placed on an empty coffin,
An insignificant box
Shadowed by memories.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
28th.- 30th. January 2013. revised February 17th. 20i3.
Written in response to the 2013 Holocaust Memorial Day.
I have made a pilgrimage to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.
3rd. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War.
Monday 28 January 2013
Friday 18 January 2013
The Girl Who Came to Tea, A Childhood Memory of Wartime London. A Threnody for Violette Szabo.
My mother and her sister left the room
Closing the door behind them,
But I was more fortunate,
I was allowed to stay there,
Cosy and warm in a safe place,
A small child in the corner
Playing on the floor.
Violette sat talking seriously with my grandmother
At the table by the window,
A beautiful young woman
Buoyed up by excitement and real pride.
My grandmother treated her with a greater natural respect
Than the smart naval officer who sometimes came to call.
I knew that she was exceptional, an unusually important visitor,
But my infant mind just could not work out why;
I assumed she was a member of the family.
She was fiercely serious, considerate, but also fun,
She seemed to carry happiness in her pocket, a gift for friend and stranger,
And she lit up the dowdy room with her bright young smile,
I felt privileged to be there
In her company.
Violette stayed quite late, apparently without a care, just passing the time of day
With cups of tea and cakes from the family shop.
Then suddenly she stepped forward, stooping and laughing, lifted me high up out of my sanctuary
On the polished linoleum floor,
And for that moment we had become almost equal, wild frenetic playmates
Romping by the fireside in the chilly wartime house.
But so soon she had to leave us, stepping briskly into the black-out,
The wind tugging the ancient Plane trees. An air raid siren howling into the dark.
I gave way to an aching sadness,
A cold mood of foreboding I was too young to comprehend.
"Never forget that girl", my grandmother whispered,
As we watched her walk away
Across the unlit street,
"She is very very special,
Some time you will understand this, but not today,
Just never forget that we are lucky to know her".
And now, more than sixty years later
I know just how special she was,
And how precious that evening was for her
Amidst the catastrophe of war.
A week or two later she flew back into France
On her second secret mission.
This time the Gestapo got her. She kept silent under torture.
They machine gunned her against a prison wall.
No ashes remained to send back home to England.-
But although at that time I was only a very small child
I have still not forgotten, nor will I ever forget
Her sweetly infectious smile,
Her cheeky South London laughter.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 17th.-22nd. January 2013.
For Violette Szabo, the bravest of the brave. My grandmother never fully got over her death.
2nd. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War.
"
Closing the door behind them,
But I was more fortunate,
I was allowed to stay there,
Cosy and warm in a safe place,
A small child in the corner
Playing on the floor.
Violette sat talking seriously with my grandmother
At the table by the window,
A beautiful young woman
Buoyed up by excitement and real pride.
My grandmother treated her with a greater natural respect
Than the smart naval officer who sometimes came to call.
I knew that she was exceptional, an unusually important visitor,
But my infant mind just could not work out why;
I assumed she was a member of the family.
She was fiercely serious, considerate, but also fun,
She seemed to carry happiness in her pocket, a gift for friend and stranger,
And she lit up the dowdy room with her bright young smile,
I felt privileged to be there
In her company.
Violette stayed quite late, apparently without a care, just passing the time of day
With cups of tea and cakes from the family shop.
Then suddenly she stepped forward, stooping and laughing, lifted me high up out of my sanctuary
On the polished linoleum floor,
And for that moment we had become almost equal, wild frenetic playmates
Romping by the fireside in the chilly wartime house.
But so soon she had to leave us, stepping briskly into the black-out,
The wind tugging the ancient Plane trees. An air raid siren howling into the dark.
I gave way to an aching sadness,
A cold mood of foreboding I was too young to comprehend.
"Never forget that girl", my grandmother whispered,
As we watched her walk away
Across the unlit street,
"She is very very special,
Some time you will understand this, but not today,
Just never forget that we are lucky to know her".
And now, more than sixty years later
I know just how special she was,
And how precious that evening was for her
Amidst the catastrophe of war.
A week or two later she flew back into France
On her second secret mission.
This time the Gestapo got her. She kept silent under torture.
They machine gunned her against a prison wall.
No ashes remained to send back home to England.-
But although at that time I was only a very small child
I have still not forgotten, nor will I ever forget
Her sweetly infectious smile,
Her cheeky South London laughter.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 17th.-22nd. January 2013.
For Violette Szabo, the bravest of the brave. My grandmother never fully got over her death.
2nd. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War.
"
Friday 11 January 2013
Alma.of Sarajevo.
The most beautiful smile in the world-
The smile of a pregnant woman,
Shy, ecstatic, playful;
The roses pressed to her heart
Bereft of thorns.
She has almost forgiven the soldier who killed her brother,
Almost, but not entirely.
The ruins concealing snipers are now just ruins;
Wild flowers have sprung up under the broken walls.
She stoops in silence, displaying a simple formality,
And lays the roses gently upon his tomb.
Concealed in darkness
Her unborn infant
turns and kicks
with abrupt power.
The mother stares half blind at ice white grave stones
And grabs her stomach to kill the sudden pain.
Her cry makes desolate the quiet spaces.
Visceral terror swiftly subsides
But carves a wound that will for all time scar her
Deep, unyielding.
The memory of the day that she was shot
And clubbed with rifle butts by rebel soldiers
Is, strangely, somehow easier to live with
Than these ferocious seconds of foetal pain.
It is now ten years since the fighting ceased.
Hugging her pregnant belly
She turns to leave the hillside cemetery
And begins the long slow climb back to her home.
The crack of a dead branch breaking could be gunfire.
Instinctively she bows her head and runs,
Just like her brother ran the day he died
Caught in the mountains that circle Sarajevo.
Ancient pines conceal the path in shadow.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
11th.- 12th.-24th. January. - March 8th. 2013.
Rewritten August 28th. - 30th. 2014.
For all the brave women who have suffered in wartime.
1st. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War
The smile of a pregnant woman,
Shy, ecstatic, playful;
The roses pressed to her heart
Bereft of thorns.
She has almost forgiven the soldier who killed her brother,
Almost, but not entirely.
The ruins concealing snipers are now just ruins;
Wild flowers have sprung up under the broken walls.
She stoops in silence, displaying a simple formality,
And lays the roses gently upon his tomb.
Concealed in darkness
Her unborn infant
turns and kicks
with abrupt power.
The mother stares half blind at ice white grave stones
And grabs her stomach to kill the sudden pain.
Her cry makes desolate the quiet spaces.
Visceral terror swiftly subsides
But carves a wound that will for all time scar her
Deep, unyielding.
The memory of the day that she was shot
And clubbed with rifle butts by rebel soldiers
Is, strangely, somehow easier to live with
Than these ferocious seconds of foetal pain.
It is now ten years since the fighting ceased.
Hugging her pregnant belly
She turns to leave the hillside cemetery
And begins the long slow climb back to her home.
The crack of a dead branch breaking could be gunfire.
Instinctively she bows her head and runs,
Just like her brother ran the day he died
Caught in the mountains that circle Sarajevo.
Ancient pines conceal the path in shadow.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
11th.- 12th.-24th. January. - March 8th. 2013.
Rewritten August 28th. - 30th. 2014.
For all the brave women who have suffered in wartime.
1st. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War
Tuesday 8 January 2013
Child in the Crowded Subway, Winter Snapshots.
Seldom a face of true beauty
At ease in a quicksand of crowds
Dead leaves cover the garden
Sun squints between massed clouds
The land locked gulls are crying
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
December 13th. 1971 - January 8th. 2013.
At ease in a quicksand of crowds
Dead leaves cover the garden
Sun squints between massed clouds
The land locked gulls are crying
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
December 13th. 1971 - January 8th. 2013.
Thursday 3 January 2013
Emergency Ward Wasp, an Urban Adventure.
...............enters the Study
Wasp
Unzipping the quiet spaces
With a curt buzz,
A snide bell intermittently ringing.
I am stung into action,
The Skull and Cross Bones
Now come to mind;
The pirate loops the loop.
Iron invades my soul.
The cat looks on from a safe distance.
A brass weight snatched by sweaty fingers:
A square of wall crumbles to dust:
My shoes turn white.
I had imagined a sabre splitting hairs,
Not this plummeting rubble.
The cat spins like a broken Top
Flaying the carpet.
Electric wires fizzle and pop:
Smartly the safety catch is thrown
Instigating silence.
The thermometer has lost several degrees
In less than a minute.
I carefully put down the brass weight,
Then return to my book.
The cat stretches her paws and yawns.
A small wing flickers.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
October 24th. 2012 - January 6th. 2013. (First sketched May 20th. 1973)
Wasp
Unzipping the quiet spaces
With a curt buzz,
A snide bell intermittently ringing.
I am stung into action,
The Skull and Cross Bones
Now come to mind;
The pirate loops the loop.
Iron invades my soul.
The cat looks on from a safe distance.
A brass weight snatched by sweaty fingers:
A square of wall crumbles to dust:
My shoes turn white.
I had imagined a sabre splitting hairs,
Not this plummeting rubble.
The cat spins like a broken Top
Flaying the carpet.
Electric wires fizzle and pop:
Smartly the safety catch is thrown
Instigating silence.
The thermometer has lost several degrees
In less than a minute.
I carefully put down the brass weight,
Then return to my book.
The cat stretches her paws and yawns.
A small wing flickers.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
October 24th. 2012 - January 6th. 2013. (First sketched May 20th. 1973)
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