Two Poems. (1) At the Entrance to the Cave. (2) Orpheus.(Revised)

                  1.

At the Entrance to the Cave. 


Eurydice was not Lazarus.
She did not reach the light.
One death was enough for her.

For her love was a silent prayer
prayed in an empty church
to the flickering impermanence of a candle.

She turned back at the sound of music.
Retreated into the depths of her tomb,
far from the howling of disconsolate wolves.

Above her tomb her unhappy husband
sang to the dawn his irretrievable loss
while the wolves gathered to tear him to pieces.

For the wolves the perfection of his art
was a beauty that they could not endure,
a sound icon to be smashed and silenced.

Eurydice sat alone in the darkness,
her mementoes of her husband`s voice
falling to pieces in her fingers.

For her there could be no new beginning,
her life was perfected in twenty years,
that is why the snake bit deep into her ankle.

Resurrection is only for the unfulfilled,
for those whose tasks remain uncompleted,
for those that have not touched the hem of perfection.

Orpheus invented song and verse,
for him there was no turning back
to know a fate more ordinary.

For Eurydice the simplicity of a well lived life
was all that was needed to complete her journey
into eternal solitude.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 2nd. 2016.
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                  2.

           Orpheus.


Holding hands, lost in the dark,
your face a distant memory.

This torch intensifies the night,
I dare not turn in case I see you.

Next time I stray into your kingdom
your veil may be a different colour.

The photographs I took last summer
have faded leaving not a trace.

This morning when I swept the leaves,
an adder stirred beneath my foot.

Perhaps there is no after life,
and yet your touch is warm and tender,

so like the breath of a baby`s kiss,
or a delicate pulse deep in the womb.

But the shadows of ten thousand dreams
now haunt the rocks on which we stand.

I hear your voice.      I turn to answer.
Your hands no more will rest in mine.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 26th. - 31st. 2016.
September 4th. 2016.