Bolero.

Invoking the bull
The dancer becomes the bull as she dances
And yet remains entirely woman
Even though the bull
Has entered every nerve,
Entered every muscle
Of her rocking
           crouching
                         body
As she slowly gives new life, new life to the
                                                                 bull,
The raw dark spirit of her fearlessness,
The fearlessness of the maddened bull
Facing the cape and the sword.

The matador is not transformed by the dance,
He is merely swaying to the beat of the drum,
Empowered to kill     what he cannot become.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 25th. - 26th. 2018.

Written after watching a ballet danced to Ravel`s Bolero.

The Puppeteer.(Revised).

These puppets make me doubt my own true past.
They write the songs that I discreetly wrote.
They dance the dances I adroitly danced.
These puppets try to make me disappear,
Hide me behind thick sheets, or plywood walls.
They lie out loud about who pulls their strings,
Pretending they are not the puppets that they are,
Pretending that my words are truly theirs.
But at night when I shut out the wintry moon
With curtains that my mother brought from China,
I pack these puppets into cardboard boxes,
And fold their theatre underneath my bed.
I can now sleep like a child, safe in my certainties,
And not be fooled by what the world believes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 28th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Winter Dreaming.(Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Winter Dreaming.(Revised).: Listening for the Firebird on the shortest day of the year, hoping that summer will come quickly. This was the first ballet that I danc...

A Ramble through My Sunday Morning Mind.

Waking at the snap crackle and pop of dawn
I listen to the broken consort of birds,
(The honk of geese imitating horns),
Interacting with a Jacobean love song
Broadcast over chimney pots and plane trees
By my neighbour`s FM radio.
Sunday morning in North West Four,
The wind westerly, the bright clouds scudding,
And purring cars replacing the click of heels
Rat-tat-tatting the weekday pavements
As the fallen scions of Eve totter off to work.

Late last night I heard the clack of boot steps,
A flock of students flouncing home from Camden
To reconvene their ceiling imploding party,
Or to flop down softly, a heap of disengaged puppets
Flung at an unmade bed.
If I were fourteen I would be right there with them
Making out to be a manly cocksure twenty,
My mouth a megaphone hoarse with madness,
My eyes glued to the girls.
Soon enough those kids will be as bald as I am,
Self mocking and unkempt, bemused at being old.

Tomorrow, it seems, is just another Monday,
The day of the week God never pronounced good,
His mind already fixed on twice blessed Tuesday,
Adam still dumb in the lifeless clay.
And so I can waste another hour or two in bed,
Another hour listening to my neighbour`s FM radio
Before I dawdle soulfully to 9.30 Mass
To sing out loud the words I sometimes believe in,
That is when my mind is awake,

Because only when singing am I truly alive and awake,
Awake like a dancer to subtle syncopations,
Awake as the birds when they signal the dawn.-
Oh well, time to get out of bed and make ready,
Two hours singing carols should perk up the day.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
8th.-10th.-22nd. December 2018.

Rocking Horse Blues. (Revised).

My rocking horse lived out in the garden.
He loved the summer months, the scented grasses,
The willow trees swaying gentle curtains,
The many coloured flowers, brilliant like small suns.
But when the winter came, he had no coat, no cover,
He stood out in the snow, his circus finery
Fading swiftly in the London gloom.
Soon he was just a pile of wood and plaster,
His crimson saddle a patch of tattered leather
Lost among the scattered leaves and branches
That fell to earth in the autumn squalls.
My jaunty rocking horse remained outside
Because there was no space in my bedroom,
And daddy did not want to waste tarpaulin
To save a toy he was too large to play on;
It was, after all, not his rocking horse.
Now sixty years have passed, and I am grey and grumpy,
But every now and then I dream my little horse
Longing for warm fires and hoof deep carpets
As he flaked to brittle dust beneath the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 17th.- 19th.2018.

Tiger Lily.

I did not know you could be SO jealous,
SO out of your mind with angst and fury,
Spilling burnt food all over the cooker,
Breaking a vase.
All this because of a short conversation,
A few words spoken out of your hearing
Between your sister and your favourite man.

I did not know you could do SO MUCH damage,
Trashing your bedroom and spoiling the toilet,
A human Wrecking Ball in your own home,
A demolition expert on heat.
All this because of an imagined liaison
Between two people you admire and adore
When they were simply sheltering from precipitous
                                                                            rain.

Strangely it seems he approves of your actions,
The implacable fierceness of a Tigress
Protecting her kill and her feeding young
Is a scene that ricocheted through his mind
When he heard the report down the phone.
So you are the woman he could spend his life with,
You would keep the wide world away from the door,
And the kids would grow wise in your care.

Do not worry, your sister is not a rival,
She could not live with a man so like you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 7th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Nineteenth Century Views of Japan.(Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Nineteenth Century Views of Japan.(Revised).: I did not know Mount Fuji was so large. The boats - four or five deft pen strokes - Float in a pale blue bay. A purple scarf of cloud su...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Advent Eve.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Advent Eve.: Remembered fears become real once more. Bare trees stoop, Bleached skeletons flayed by Arctic wind, Starving paupers hunched in snow, S...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) A Dream of Deep Midwinter. (Revised) (2) Note...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) A Dream of Deep Midwinter. (Revised) (2) Note...: Butter coloured moon, Midnight December, A single light in the coldest of skies Shining above the Christmas rooftops, The bare boned tr...

Two Poems (1) A Country Wedding. (2) The Guest. (1st. Version).

              1.

When you were born
                          An aviary
Of exotic
                Tropical singing
                          Birds
Flew into your heart
                & set it beating
To the radiant songs of hot summer nights
Sung beneath a garden of stars


A garden of multi faceted blossoms
Reflected in your violet eyes
As we danced
               In the glow
               Of midsummer fires
To the music that only we could hear


Our bare feet kicking through smouldering embers
That for once seemed as cool as autumnal showers


But tonight
                    As I sit alone in the kitchen
Drinking green tea
                    Sharp and bitter
To keep myself awake to write -
I listen to the strange December stillness
Clinging like frost to the window panes
That reveal a landscape denuded of birds -
And I wonder if my memories are simply
                    a story
Imagined to keep the cold at bay
As I sit alone and look back through the
                                                         years
Waiting for someone who may never call


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
November 28th. 2018.

              2.


Curled up in my arms
like a cat
You refused to be moved
                  from my bed
Until you were ready for
breakfast -
A slow walk in the park.

The shoes you left under the sofa
Will you collect them sometime next Fall?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 30th. 2018.

A Lesson in Seeing.

Sumi-e
That is what my poems are,
A flick of strong colour
On off white paper
Hinting at delicate cherry blossom
Or a mountain sketched in black and white
But seeming more real
Than the actual mountain.

These paintings have soul,
They pulsate with life,
The careful music of Monk, or Bach,
Visualised with the swish of an ink laden brush
By a solitary master
In a quiet house.
Even this robin, frozen in time,
Seems about to chirrup and hop.

I put away my book of instructions,
It would take me decades to paint like this.
Things that seem effortless, as easy as breathing,
Take half a lifetime to achieve.
But at least I have my palette of words,
Thin lines sketched on off white paper,
And with these I can perhaps begin
To tell a meaningful story.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 26th. 2018.

White Porcelain Plate.

The beauty
In a simple plain white plate
Eluded me
Until I watched the moon rise
Above a frozen lake
One still night in November.

A lotus flower unfolding
Did not remind me
Of rebirth and extinction,
Of Buddha or of Christ,
But of a hollow in a beggar`s hand
Held up to me for alms,

Held up to me in greeting.
Held up to me in grief.

A single paper cup
That once held holy water,
But now lies empty
Where the beggar squatted
Is beautiful to me,
More lovely than a curved Champagne glass
Filled to the brim with Blanc de noirs.

Simple things are honest things
I reckon,
We know at once exactly what they are.
Complexity disorientates,
Dazzles the onlooker
Just like a searchlight shone in tired eyes
To shock rough sleepers from their hideaways.

The beauty
Of a simple small white plate
Placed upon my table
Adds a touch of homeliness
To a crowded space
Dominated by my work computer.

I don`t need complexities anymore,
They don`t ring true to life or to nature.
A simple plate may last a thousand years,
A computer is outmoded in six months.
All I need is a clear view of the stars,
Home grown meals, a supply of pens and paper.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
November 15th. - 16th. - 17th. - 19th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Street Scene, 9th. Lunar Month 1856.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Street Scene, 9th. Lunar Month 1856.: Studying a print by Utagawa Hiroshige I fall asleep in my rocking chair And find myself quietly strolling through The back streets of Ed...

Street Scene, 9th. Lunar Month 1856.

Studying a print by Utagawa Hiroshige
I fall asleep in my rocking chair
And find myself quietly strolling through
The back streets of Edo.

The people that I meet
Nod politely as I pass;
Their faces, deep in shadow,
Their voices muffled whispers.

Almost invisible beneath the yellow umbrellas
That shield their heads from the evening rain
Gently sloping down from purple clouds,
I sense their eyes are shrewdly watching me
With a delicate precision.

To find a sleep walker in their midst,
A stranger unperturbed by the rawness
Of the autumn evening,
Is an event that breaks all the complex rules
By which they live their lives.
They pass me by as they would pass a beggar,
Or an official they do not care to meet.

The opening chorus of Brahms Requiem
Jolts me awake. I have dropped the book
On the kitchen carpet. I observe it is not damaged
And has remained open at the page
That I was carefully studying
Before I suddenly drifted into sleep.

I pick up the book and re-acquaint myself
With the brightly lit shops and wooden houses,
The neat umbrellas tilted in the wind.
And for a moment I am almost back in Edo,
Strolling quietly through the evening crowds,
An outsider trying to make myself at home.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 12th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Schooled by Cinema.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Schooled by Cinema.:                       1 You teach us with machines Wars imagery, Projecting through dark halls transparent dead, Their days of terror r...

(1) Love Story. Revised.(2) A Fragment.

                  1.

          Love Story.


My personal B Class Movie
Flickers through my brain,
Preventing me from sleeping.

A girl who no longer lives
Walks down a street that has ceased to exist,
I stumble and fall at her side.
If we had married would she still be alive?

I remember the dogs barking,
The moon the colour of marigolds
Huge in an autumn sky.

The silence between us was brittle
With a thousand unspoken regrets.

Love tore us to tiny shreds
As though we were paper dolls,

Dolls thrown out by a child
In a sudden selfish fit.

The girl succumbed to opioids.
I rarely leave my home.
We could not have lived together.
We could never have lived apart.

My personal B Class Movie
Flickers through my brain,
Preventing me from sleeping,

Casting shadows on the moon.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 7th. - 8th. - 10th. 2018.

                  2.

       A Fragment.

I cried out my heart,
Only the wind heard me,
And a bird with a broken wing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 6th. 2018.

(1) Hiroshima Remembered. (2) September 30th. 2018. (3) Phone Call.

Hiroshima Remembered.


Houses of wood and paper,
How beautiful.
How fleeting.

           *

September 30th. 2018.


Not your voice,
Not your heartbeat,
Just your breathe upon my face.

           *

The patio rose
I sent you last summer,
Is it still blooming?

            *

Another autumn,
The sheets are cold,
Faded lipstick on my pillow.

            *

I sat meditating.
When you sang in the kitchen
I laughed like a child.

            *
   
    Phone Call.

You call me.
I pick up the receiver.
You are too shy to speak.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 30th. - November 4th. 2018.

Age.

Now that I am more than 70
My life line is almost undone,
But old age should be a time of fecundity,
Not of dearth.

Cracked trunks held firm by steel supports
May yield their richest harvests
The closer they lean to the turf.

Spring blossoms adorning gnarled boughs
Open wide, like a prisoner`s eyes
To filch a glimmer of light,

A glimpse of the morning sun.
But too soon, frail petals descending,
Transformed into rust coloured tears
That dissolve in the cold dank earth,

Where all that begins must vanish,
All that ends be brought to new birth.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
April 27th. 28th. 2014. - October 30th. 31st. 2018.

(1) These We Cannot Know. (2) Rose hips.

My sperm frozen - graded and stored -
Perhaps - in a hundred years or more -
I shall father IVF children

A new family that may from time to time
Imagine my voice explaining to them
A history almost completely forgotten

A history sketched in dusty folders
Intelligible only to specialist scholars
Who can decipher a lost dialect

A parochial language - long out of fashion
Because all that we love has faded to dust
Like carnations pressed in a wedding album

A plush book packed with faded pictures
Even the widow can no longer decipher
Or bring back to life in her imagination.

We are all the children of hope filled dreams
That vanish like frost in the morning light.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 27th. - 28th. 2018.

                     *

              Rose hips.

After the first frost
The rose hips are
Delicious


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th.2018.

Japan.(Revised).

I did not know Mount Fuji was so large.
The artist has certainly come up with a powerful image,
Part real - part picture postcard.
Sailing boats - four or five deft pen strokes -
Float in a pale blue bay.
A purple scarf of cloud surrounds the mountain top.
Sometimes I press my ears close to the paper,
But as yet I`ve never heard the temple bells.

This dream of Edo was painted years before
American gunships appeared one misty morning
To blackmail the Shogunate into modern times.
This is the dream not shown in the faded images
Arranged, with awkward skill, not careful art,
By a young marine back in the eighteen eighties,
During a courtesy visit by the British Navy.
He prefered the box and lens to crafted woodcuts,
The truth was best preserved in black and white.

The glass plates have long ago been broken.
The photos in my great grandfathers album
Show an old world splintering at the edges,
Falling apart under the weight of progress.
No voices are extant, only these silent pictures
Of scenes so still they could have been invented
But remain authentic to the clash of cultures. -

The sun has set over distant Fuji.
A strip of Prussian Blue depicts the sky.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 4th. - 6th. 2017. - October 23rd. - 24th. - December 3rd. 2018.
October 27th. - 28th. 2019.

The Girl with Smoke Blue Eyes. (In the countryside near Kehl am Rhein).

It is the voices of bees I dream every night
While I think of my old home by the Rhine.
The voices of bees in the drowsy air
Accompanying our walk along the dyke
That in places is higher than the neat farm houses,
The silvery windows of Lutheran churches.

It is the voices of bees in the dank chill wood
Where we kissed in secret among the echoes
Of ancient gods and arrogant Nazis,
Of cannibal witches and inconceivable wars.
We kissed in secret, out of sight of the paths
Crowded with chattering Sunday hikers.

The bitter sweet taste of rye bread and honey
Stung my tongue as your lips touched mine.
Your smoke blue eyes were full of questions
I could not answer, even though I tried.
An invisible sword marked a barrier between us
As though between sleeping knight and maiden.

But this sword was our dread of the cruelties of time
Not a faded shadow of myth and legend.
We knew that I soon had to pack my suitcase
And take the train and boat to England.
My fellow islanders had turned their backs on Europe
And so I could no longer hope or remain,

Remain with my girl with the smoke blue eyes
Who walked with me quietly by the wide river
Watching the wild swans guiding their cygnets
Between the miniature offshore islets;
Walked with me quietly upon the tall dyke
Entranced by the voices of wild woodland bees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 21st. 2018. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: September 1st. 2018. (Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: September 1st. 2018. (Completed Poem).:                   1 . Scholars drawing arbitrary graphs Have decreed the onset of autumn Although the autumnal equinox Is more than thr...

Trevor J Potter's Art: October Poem.

Trevor J Potter's Art: October Poem.: When did I meet you first? Where did we first speak? In Germany or on St. Stephen`s Green? By the Liffey or by the Rhine? I just can`t r...

The Archivist. - After Watching Hamlet (Completed Version).

Searching through the rubble of my life,
The Broken relationships,
The ditched ideals,
I find the charred remnants of a persona
A painted image on a flimsy rag
Long since thrown out on the tip,
The municipal nest of flies.

So this is a portrait of who I thought I was
When trying to make a mark in my local streets,
Impress the girls,
Cadge a kiss or a drink.
I was not the wise guy I made out to be,
Everything I said was an affectation,
A frayed quilt of other peoples words,

A frayed quilt to hide my terrors under
While displaying a lack of purpose at every turn,
A somnambulant clown
With nothing much to say
And scared of being laughed at,
Regarded as a small time proto-Yorick
When Hamlets guile had always been my guide.
But this, my friends, is only half the story,
I find a faded photo in a drawer,
A document I had not seen for years.

There are areas of my life I rarely look at,
But the photographer here caught me unawares
When the masks were down
And the quilt left in the locker.
I was twenty three, my first love killed by cancer,
The only girl I never told a lie to,
And the panic in my eyes was clear to see,
The panic of an infant left alone,

Lost in the haunted dark without a candle
And with no one in the house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. - 14th. - 15th. 2018.

Ghost Sonata. (Revised).

I must translate you into music,
Your smile, your laugh, your tears,
The soft curves of your body
Like undulating melodies
Written on the dawn wind
As you move from window to window
Peering into the silent house
To see if I am there.

I must transmute you into harmony,
The gold of Brahms or Schumann,
The music of the spheres
That the alchemists could never find
When seeking transformations,
Or concocting strange effusions
Of herbs, water and stones,
Magic leavening the art of science.
I must sift your face from the wind
That scuffs the autumn clouds,

Blows all things to nothing,
Transfigures all that was once real
Into the flickering lights of memory,
Visuals slowly faltering into imagination.-
I must shape your portrait into song,
Enliven the curved lines of the pastel image
With the muted heartbeats of delicate rhythms
That I can sense deep in my mind,

Sense in my mind when I look at your portrait
That I drew last time that you were here,
A stranger peering in at my window,
Yet leaving no trace when I opened the door.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 8th. - 9th. 2018.

Mistranslations. (Completed Poem).

Through a glass darkly
Implies so much more than
In a mirror dimly, or
See but a poor reflection.

I study raindrops falling
On the surface of clear water
When the wintry light is dancing
A galaxy of patterns
Crystal clear and brilliant,
Delicate miniature rainbows
That vanish without trace
Once the showers have passed
And dusk paints out the sun.

The sleeping face of my true lover
Seems transfigured every morning
By intermittent sunlight
Filtered through the bedroom curtains
As though through the tears of Ondine
When she sank back through the waves.
Deep shadows shaped by dreaming
Ripple underneath her eyelids
Dark streams I cannot fathom.

Although we love each other
We only know what we can see
Through a glass darkly
Or like shadows in a mirror.
I pull the curtains open.
My breathe fogs the gleaming window.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 23rd. - October 4th. - 5th. 2018.

The three translations of 1 Corinthians 13 come from (a) The King James Authorised Version, (b) The New Revised Standard Version and, (c) The New International Version. Three translations from the New Testament Greek of St. Paul, all different in tone and therefore, subtleties of meaning differ quite radically from one English Bible text to the next.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Loss in November.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Loss in November.:               1. White sunlight slanting Through cracks in the door Late roses in bloom Blind The old men shuffle On sticks and sto...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dreaming of Japan.(Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dreaming of Japan.(Completed Poem).: It must really be autumn. I am watching films about Japan. I wish I could add wings to the roof of my house And fly there, Over the mou...

Dreaming of Japan.(Rewritten Poem).

It must really be autumn.
I am watching films about Japan.

I wish I could add wings to the roof of my house
And fly there,
Over the mountains of China,
The long narrow land of Korea,

The multi textured sea.
When my house lands softly near Kyoto
I shall watch the red leaves fall
And listen to the sad voices of strangers
Counting the days to December.
Perhaps I shall then pluck feathers from the wings
And sacrifice them to the Shinto gods,
And thank them for gifting me an easy journey
To this land of vibrant colours,
So different from the pastel shades el England.

For some reason Japan is the place I love the most
Although I have only been there once or twice
And can hardly speak the language.
It could be something to do with the brightness of the sun,
And the winding climb through woods to a hilltop temple
Where prayers are offered in silence,
And incense breathes the breath of sacred Kami,
Through the wooden halls.
But I think its more to do with the serendipity
Of finding myself in a landscape of many colours
That in England are only seen on video links,
Or the Hiroshige prints in the British Museum.

Yes, it really must be autumn.
This morning I noticed a difference in the daylight,
A moist paleness I associate with October,
And the early coming on of London street lamps.
The weather must be similar in Japan,
Except the sunlight could never be so mellow,
Even in midwinter, snow weighing down the rooftops,
Travellers trudging slowly towards Edo.

The London of my youth was grey and insular.
In Japan I learned to see things as they are.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 26th. - 28th. 2018. - Rewritten February 2nd. 2021.
When I was a teenage singer I visited Japan more than once. The country and its culture made a massive positive impact upon me. To this day I love Japanese poetry, ancient and modern, and have been deeply influenced by both Zen and Pure Land Buddhism.

Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon.

Just look
How strange and beautiful these aircraft are!
More beautiful than tall yachts
Bucking before the wind,
Or the swoop and turn of Heron Gulls
On a hot and salty breeze.
I just cannot believe how beautiful these aircraft are!
Strange and delicately beautiful,
Works of art designed to kill
With the efficiency of a lioness
Protecting her boisterous cubs.

The spitfire, of course, is a compendium of elegance,
A suit of courtly armour in classic British style,
But the Mustang is a racer born and bred,
A silver stallion, magnificent and proud,
That only the bravest of the warrior braves
Could reign in and pacify.
These perfectly manufactured works of modern art
Primed and burnished
To arrow through the sky,
Were the adored protectors of my early years,
Destroying flying bombs above the London suburbs,
Or strafing Romel`s tanks in Normandie.

Yes, just look
How strange and beautiful these aircraft are!
Almost surreal and yet absolutely deadly,
Salvador Dali could have invented them.-
I have no strong nostalgia for the nineteen forties,
I have only friends and family in mainland Europe,
And I just cannot understand why nations go to war,
No cause is worth a human abattoir,
But the extreme beauty of these fighter aircraft
Completely dazzle me,
I look at them as I would study a Rodin,
And instead of being appalled by malignant power,
I stand stock still in wonder.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 17th. - 20th. 2018. 

September 1st. 2018. (Completed Poem).

                  1.

Scholars drawing arbitrary graphs
Have decreed the onset of autumn
Although the autumnal equinox
Is more than three weeks away.

I sit in my sun warmed garden
Listening to the hum of bees
Still collecting valuable pollen
From an abundance of summer flowers.

Male spiders criss crossing the patio
Have abandoned their secretive hideaways
To search for available females
Before the cold rains start to fall.

I value the raw beauty of nature,
The uneven flow of the seasons,
Not the politicized systems of men
Designed to make life neat and tidy,

And today, as I sit in my garden
I think of my long ago school days;
I was trained to abide by convention
And not to take note of my feelings,

Or to pack up my books and my pencils
When my heart beat to a different music
Than the monotone patter of teachers
Intoning the approved syllabus:

You must get an A grade in mathematics
Whatever the cost to your health.
You must learn to be a prudent citizen
And uphold the commonwealth. 

Enlightenment was locked up in the library;
Philosophy and ethics expunged;
History lessons were fixated on Hitler;
Einstein equated with nuclear bombs.

                  2.

Listening to the slow breath of late summer
Gently fading as evening approaches
I relax in my sun warmed garden
At ease with myself and the world.

I am no nihilist, but I do mistrust logic
When used in the workplace and schoolroom
To implement a regulated environment
Out of kilter with the natural world.

Half asleep, I now study the spiders
Behaving as arachnids must,
Colonizing my concrete patio
As they seek to increase their species.

This morning I found deep in the garage
A litter of broken webs.
Old homes deserted at daybreak,
Their secrets torn to shreds.

                   3.

September is the saddest of months,
A dying fall pressaging cruel beginnings.
The female spider eats the luckless male
At the very moment they achieve coitus.

The crimson roses in my patio garden
Attain their richest beauty in September.
Soon the buds will turn black overnight
When early frosts cut deeply into them.

But today I sit outside and read my book,
My straw hat tilted to block out the sun.
I study data compiled by erudite scholars
To explain the complexities of global warming,

A nightmare partly caused by urbanisation,
The will to power expressed in concrete towers,
Like those built on the fields I used to play in
When out of school and free to be myself,

A country boy who loved to sleep at nights
In makeshift tents under the spinning stars.-

I put down my book then take a long cool breath.
I sometimes think we should abandon cities,
Live off the land, dwell in mud brick houses,
Accept the fact that we are not so wise.

Compelled by instinct the spiders hunt for mates.
The shadow that I caste does not concern them.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 8th. - 10th. - 13th. - 14th. - October 19th. 2018.

I have only added four more lines, but they complete the poem to my satisfaction.
                               

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Christine.(New Version). (2) On Beachy Head.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Christine.(New Version). (2) On Beachy Head.:                 1 .          Christine. (New Version). I remember the daisy chain I made for you; You laughing like the small child t...

The End of a Family Holiday.

This morning, Friday, we stood beneath the lakeside willows
Watching two voles wiggle and squirm and slither
Adroitly through the lakeside grasses.
Juveniles on the loose far from the mouthings of mother,
They darted down a slope of mud and twisted vine shoots,
A slope minute to us but of wondrous height to them,
A giant slalom in their world of geese and fishes.-
This is the last day of our family get together;
The suitcases packed, the sandwiches in the freezer:
Tomorrow, at dawn, the day long drive begins,
From Camden Town to the shadows of Ben Bulben.

Last Monday I watched four straw hats bob like coracles
Dipping through shafts of light in the Chelsea Physic Garden,
The compasses lost or stowed.
The zigzag journeys seemed to have no purpose
Except, perhaps, to meander down the pathways
That stretch and curve between contrasted borders.
Sprinklers were scudding rain drops over beds
Of medicinal and malignant crops of herbs
That, when in bloom and sickly rich with pollen,
Become the in vogue hot spots for half of London`s bees.
I once dreamt the Physic Garden was a maze
With the weather beaten statue of Hans Sloane
A tetchy phantom scowling in the centre.

Those artificial rain drops looping through the heat haze
Drench deceitful Belladonnas, the simple Grapefruit Tree,
A mix of Echinacea, Orchids, Borage, the spindly Lavandula,
The unregarded Ice Plant that cures both cuts and coughs.-
Observed by the stern gaze of the stone physician,
I sat and pecked at crisps and crumb flecked apples
While watching the straw hats tack and dip and turn
According to the wisdom of the wearers.
My family look quite raffish in their hats,
Straw boats tilted awkwardly on tides
That ride unruly currents.

This is the last day of our family get together,
Tomorrow the car burns up the road to Ireland,
And I, who will be left behind, at home in North West London,
May walk, from time to time, alone across the Heath,
The chatter of passing strangers            confirming my solitude.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 August 11th. - 23rd. - 27th. - September 7th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Sad Farewell to Daniel Coffey. (Revised Ending)....

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Sad Farewell to Daniel Coffey. (Revised Ending)....: Farewell old rebel dancer, Dear Breathless Dan, King of the soft shoe shuffle, At last you have broken loose From the iron chains of gr...

Veiled.

Soft, delicate colours.

Summer rain drifting through greenery.

Water glistening on your skin
Reflects the bright face of the moon
Glimpsed through the bedroom window.
Faults in the glass distort the image.

I am sure of few things, sometimes your smile,

The touch of your hand in the dark.

                     *

I wake up with a start,
You are not here beside me.

I walk from room to room in a daze.
The coats are all dusty. You are nowhere to be found.

I was sure you were with me all through the night:
Five years gone by           but you have not altered.

I can still feel the warmth of your hair on my fingers;
Read the depths in your eyes for hours.

                    *

Soft, delicate colours.

Summer rain drifting through greenery.

In a month or two you shall be back here with me,
But the waiting chokes      like a mouthful of sand.
The morning rain cold on my skin,
The wind is stinging my cheek bone.

I turn to the north and whisper your name.

This garden is dappled with memories.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 14th. - 21st. - 29th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Short Poems For Aunt May.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Short Poems For Aunt May.:                           1 .                   Endgame . There are no poems in the eyes of the dead Only the shadow of a sun gone out...

Out of the Ark.

Woodworm,
Deathwatch Beetles,
Carnivorous Ants
All snuggled down discretely
In Noah`s timber Ark,
But never offered Noah
A single word of thanks.

Thus it is
With politicians,
With casual friends,
With Dogs and Cats,
They take what is on offer
Then smartly turn their backs,
Needy eyes fixed on a new horizon.

Naamah,
Lamech`s feisty daughter,
Don`t count my worth in cash,
Don`t pack your shoulder bag
Once my turn is done,
My credit in the wheely bin,
My reputation trashed.
Please don`t make tracks.
I etched a dove upon your wedding ring,
Please take note of that.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 13th. - August 8th. 2018.
Naamah was Noah`s wife. She refused to get into the Ark until the very last moment.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Snow Queen. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Snow Queen. (Revised).: My eyes soon tire of such opulence. In future please keep to simpler costumes So that I can dream who you really are. In the meantime I...

The Snow Queen. (Revised).

My eyes soon tire of such opulence.
In future please keep to simpler costumes
So that I can dream who you really are.

In the meantime I sit quietly in the amphitheatre
Watching you move among the other dancers
Like a shaft of light intermittently piercing the clouds,

Your blonde hair almost touching the boards of the stage
As you trust yourself to the strength of your partner,
The choreographed moves planned to look improvised.

To be honest, I prefer you in torn jeans and trainers
Standing incognito outside the theatre,
Just another pedestrian in the bustling crowds

Juggling the choices of tube train, night bus or taxi,
The applause a small part of the long weary day.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 2nd. - 3rd. - 5th. 2018.

I am indebted to Tchaikovsky for the first line of this poem. 

Colour Box Blues.

The world that I live in seems unreal right now,
Unsubstantial,
Impermanent, quickly changing.

The colour of my skin changes with the quality of light.
English summer light,
Venetian light,
The whirling lights in a third class dance hall,
The orange glow of city street lamps.
You cannot catalogue who I am
By just looking at my skin.
Tomorrow you may not quite recognise me, brother,
If we meet in a different place.

The painting that I completed after midnight
Looks different now the sun is up
And silvering the curtains.
I open the curtains, the colours come to life,
The images that I drew under lamplight
Now shimmer with a new quixotic brilliance,
But if I close the curtains
The colours will dull down again
Like embers becoming ashes.

In the meantime I embrace the beauty of the first light,
Revelling in the unreality of each moment
Because this unreality is crammed with beauty,
The sunlight making patterns on the ceiling,
Patterns that change even while I look.

The shadow of my hand darkens the bedroom mirror.
Each morning my face is new to me in the glass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 21st. - 24th. - 27th. 2018.

Schumann`s Last Piano Pieces. (Revised).

The angels that Schumann heard
Singing in the night
Were real to him,
And are all too real to us
As we sit side by side at the keyboard,
Two pianists with awkward fingers
Trying to make sense of the score.

These angel voices were perhaps the tongues
Of madness
Breaking through the stillness of the night
As he snuggled down to sleep beside his wife,
Or perhaps they were as real as he believed,
Real as his wife, his seven restless children
Curled in their cots,
The night lights flickering palely.

They were not the songs of ghosts,
But more like the ringing of Easter bells
Out over suburban gardens,
Bleak patios purple with hyacinth,
For yes, these chords are truly loud and clamorous,
They ring and shout and thunder
Beneath our struggling fingers
Like sonorous church chorales
Greeting the resurrection.

No, Schumann was not mad when he wrote this music.
It was the silence that followed, the loneliness of the asylum,
Where, cut off from his family, the laughter of his children,
He was forced to renounce the validity of his dreams.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - July 24th. 2018.

The Sound of English Spoken. (Revised).

The sound of English spoken
A mouthful of herring bones
Salt to the tongue and brittle
Raw noise in the ear
Terse - but precise


My native language is a border guard
When love is deep and powerful


Sometimes the Latins are lyrical
Melding syntax to human heartbeats
Youthful hearts beating in unison
Touching the sunlight with music
A tender kiss


Love
When I think of you I am singing
Singing intimate songs without lyrics
My native language kept in quarantine
When it cannot dance lightly


Dance lightly from partner to partner
True stories that need no telling


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. - July 19th. 2018.

The Grave of Anne Bronte, Scarborough. (New Poem).

They have given Anne a new memorial,
Those good folk who know the worth of books.
The lines I could decipher fifty years ago
Have crumbled into little heaps of sand
And gritty knots of lead. The few kind words
Broken down by decades of cold rain
Beating hard against the steep limestone escarpment
In salty gusts of wind.

The new memorial is a plain and simple plaque
That names her father but not the books she wrote,
And will perhaps survive this present century.
I sit beside the grave and try to come to terms
With how everything that makes a life worth living
Will eventually break apart and lose all meaning. -
A group of listless tourists, tied to an agenda,
Tick their check lists as they dawdle by.

Anne was the Bronte we often underrate,
Although she was the fiercest of her clan,
Speaking straight and strong with words that really troubled
Folk who hate it when the truth is spoken.
Her honesty has brought me to this hilltop graveyard
To sit and mourn her youth, but also to imagine
That I can be as honest as she was,
And not to hold my tongue when times get tough.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 26th. - 28th. 2017. - July 11th. - 12th. 2018.
The first poem was written when I was very tired, now I think I have got closer to what I was trying to say.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mexico Remembered. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mexico Remembered. (New Version).: Hyper beautiful were my Mexican friends - Living life to the limits - Loving death - a pale dreamland - Drinking new wine from shimmerin...

Mexico Remembered. (Revised).

Hyper beautiful were my Mexican friends -
Living life to the limits -
Loving death - a pale dreamland -
Drinking new wine from shimmering clouds at sunset -
Tequila from the mists of dawn -
Water from the cool stone fountains -

We danced beneath blossom as large as sombreros -
We danced through the gardens - the dusty white courtyard -
Sieved sand through quivering interlocked fingers
As we danced and sang beneath the yellowing moon -
The goddess of rebirth - of unhinged loving.

We danced to remember the revolution -
Blood on the frets of a thousand guitars.
We danced to honour the ghosts of midsummer -
To summon the harvest -
To empower desire -
We danced to honour the souls of forefathers
Present in masks -
In the painted faces
Of the crowds processing through holiday streets.
Fierce death understood as the true beginning -
Ripe seeds that must fall to make the new life
That glows in the fetus -
The burgeoning sunflower -
The snake in the shadows dodging our footsteps -
The urchins grasping at thorns in the dirt.

At ease I was with my Mexican friends -
Honest in all things - the kiss and the curse -
The brevity of life perceived as a blessing -
The raw edge that scars the pulse of the dance -
When the car took me back to the streets of LA
I wept deep in the shadows of vanquished angels.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 July 8th. - 9th. - 13th. 2018.
I love LA, the City of the Angels, but I love Mexico so much more.

Mirror Images. (Revised).

The portrait of Lucrezia Borgia
Is you to a tee -
The same thoughtful eyes -
The same exposed breast -
The same haughty profile
Disguising a profound unease -
A distrust of the venal wisdom -
The empty pursuit of power
At the core of a treacherous world.
All that the young aristocrat wanted
Was safety - love - a good life -
Raising her musician daughter
Among artists - poets - saints -
Not the attentions of an incestuous father -
Or a brother who butchered her friends.

Your family certainly lacks the glamour
Of those tarnished Vatican angels -
And poverty - not Papal wealth -
Was the hallmark of your upbringing -
A beleaguered gypsy woman
With a sad alcoholic mother -
And a father who could never be traced.
But when you stood - ill at ease - by my bedside -
Transfigured by love and by longing -
I noticed - how strangely alike
You are to the young Lucrezia -
Only your hair is a little darker -
And your eyes are black - not hazel.
But just like you - she was quietly vulnerable -
Her bravado was simply for show.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 14th. - July 3rd. - 8th. 2018.
Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most maligned figures in history. The rumours about her simply do not fit the verifiable facts. Like all aristocratic women of her time she was a pawn in the hands of the men in her family, some one to marry off for political or financial reasons. The historical Lucrezia loved the arts, and her daughter became a nun and a notable composer. Lucrezia died in childbirth at the age of 39.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Cabbage White. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Cabbage White. (Revised).: Simply carrying out her daily business The Cabbage White flits from flower to flower, Crossing the walls that separate gardens With erra...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Cabbage White.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Cabbage White.: Simply carrying out her daily business The Cabbage White flits from flower to flower, Crossing the walls that separate gardens With erra...

The Cabbage White. (Completed Version)..

Simply carrying out her daily business
The Cabbage White flits from flower to flower,
Crossing the walls that separate gardens
With erratic zigzags in the hot air
That remind me of kites flown high over mountains,
The border barracks in stony gorges.

This Cabbage White could not tell the difference between
Hindu and Christian,                      Gypsy and Jew,
She just flits from green bud to fading Delphinium,
Skirting grim car parks and streets with few trees.
A fan of the sunshine she wafts her wide wings
As a child flutters flags at a football team.

Being merely human I sit out on the patio
Counting my Good Luck on ten crooked fingers,
And caring not a jot if England progresses,
To me nationhood is an own goal scheme.
My only regret, as I sit sipping cool coffee,
Is that I cannot float away in the suns slip stream.

Freedom of thought surely, is not freedom of action,
These are two very different, almost opposite things,
And sharp technocrats know this, believe you me.
I love all my old books, my poems, my paintings,
But I would lock these away if I could take to the skies
And soar unopposed over high walls and mountains.

Soar far and away without one glance behind me
At the fences, the hedgerows, at customs and excise.

Simply carrying out her daily business
The Cabbage White flits from flower to flower,
Crossing the walls that separate gardens
With erratic zigzags in the hot air.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
29th. - 30th. June 2018. 

Before the Move.

Perhaps you will not like my world.
Perhaps you will not be able to adjust.
Everything I have here is mankind made.
Everything I love has been thoughtfully manufactured.
It is true that I have thrown out heaps of shiny plastic,
Preferring wood and steel, stone and glass,
To bowls that cannot break,
Cheap bags that last forever.
Yes, I prefer objects turned upon a lathe
Or carved with a heavy chisel,
But I live in the heart of a labyrinthine urban sprawl
Without a mountain in sight,
A lake or hedgerow,
And my roses are not wild, they have been pruned and grafted
To become four living sculptures in my yard,
The prickly guardians of my private space.
No, perhaps you will not like my urbane London world,
Preferring instead wet grass beneath bare feet,
The larks in flight high above the tilt
Of your lopsided caravan;
Your lonely walks,
Your hidden nooks deep in the tangled copse
That the farmer rarely tackles with his saw.
Yet when we sit and talk all night - all day,
In secret, where no neighbour can disturb us,
We forget to notice the objects that surround us,
The quiet fields, the vast cars blaring hip hop,
The tower blocks, the horses by the marsh,
But quietly watch the thought lines trace upon our faces
Intimate runes that only we can read.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
25th. June 2018.

Coppelia (Revised).

Walking at last
A child again
Learning how to stiffly move
From A to B
From chair to table
From bed to door

Walking at last
On solid legs
The floors unstable
The walls dissolving

Six months stone still
Locked in a coma
Your eyes clamped tight
Neck in a cast
Have wrecked your muscles
Slowed your mind
Curtailed language -
Violent epileptic seizures
Have tossed you about
Like an old rag doll

Walking at last
You struggle towards me
Across a Ward
Wide as the world
Frail arms outstretched
A high wire dreamer
Resisting assistance
Fighting the air
A smile in your eyes

I must promise myself not to mention the tears
I cried for you every night last summer


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 7th. - 8th.- 9th. - June 21st. 2018. 

Two Poems. (1) Narcotics. (2) Urban Owl.

                1

          Narcotics.


Mind - released from the fog of morphine
Realigns with the rules of reason -
The sacred texts of untruth.

To get through the day I must give up thinking,
Stare at the screen - an automaton -
Stop trying to be myself.

When I shut down the computers I am nearly blind -
I cannot see the office for what it is -
A chaos of human stories.

Pain killers do not assist me to readjust
From electronic realities to simple living -
From video porn to innocent love.

It is only when I listen to the nightingale
That the world is once more my home.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 7th. 2018. 

-----------------------------------

                 2 

         Urban Owl.


Swift - darting hunter
Eyes - small volcanoes
Erupting into the night


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 7th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pauline. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pauline. (New Version).: Grief lasts for a lifetime. After fifty two years I am still grieving for you. When I saw your self portrait made from stained glass I...

Pauline. (Completed Poem).

Grief lasts for a lifetime.

After fifty two years I am still grieving for you.

When I saw your self portrait made from stained glass
I was suddenly back in your studio.

I was a kid sprawled like a rug on the wooden floor
Making weird marks on paper.

Your paper.
                    Your charcoal.
                                             Your coloured pens.

You watched amused as I drew lines and circles,
Not thinking at all what I was doing,
My hand out-speeding my grid locked brain.

The moment I started to think about what I was doing
You snatched the sketch book away from me
And slipped it into a folder.

I protested, but then I was too wilful to understand
That art, like love, can only ever be true
When it seems to be happening by chance.

                               *

The last time we met was in the hospital.
The white sheets covered you like a shroud
That you snuggled deep into to outwit the pain.

"Please don`t give up art", you urgently whispered.
"But how? - But how?" I cried into the dark.
"Just don`t give up.- Promise me! - Promise me Trevor."

And for forty years after I could not paint or write,
But now, most days, I put my pen to paper.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 5th. - 7th. - 10th. 2018.

October 22nd. - 30th. 2021.

For a long time I could not properly complete this poem because I felt I had failed to keep my promise.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Memory. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Memory. (Revised).: When I opened the window this morning I thought that I briefly saw you Admiring the miniature roses. But then, with a shock, I realized ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Train Ride.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Train Ride.:                     The woman in the seat right next to mine Displays her pale green fingernails That signify some danger, or so it seem...

(1) A Bright May Morning. (Revised) (2) At First Sight.

                1.

A Bright May Morning.


Increasing my sense of loneliness
Your voice echoes down the telephone
A lone flute heard in the distance
A far off bird calling for a mate
Heard in the morning as I struggle to sleep
Chilled by your absence

You told me you loved me when you telephoned
Out of the blue
                          this Monday morning
But now that the truth has at last been spoken
The waiting is crueller than it used to be
When I had jettisoned hope

In a week you shall be well enough to travel-
Your bed in the ward occupied by another-
Once you are here I shall switch off the phone


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 29th. - June 10th. 2018.
---------------------------------------

               2.

    At First Sight.


Across the atrium
Your eyes look into mine

Wild lightning
Not a trace of thunder


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 27th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) My Mother`s Dinner Service. (Rewritten). (2) ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) My Mother`s Dinner Service. (Rewritten). (2) ...:                     1.    My Mother`s Dinner Service. I keep returning to these, my favourite plates, To study every detail of a pictu...

Notes Towards an Unfinished Love Story.

A flicker of sunlight cuts through the curtains. I pull them apart.

Chatting to my neighbour
Across the sunlight dappled wall
About her early roses
While I observe the shadows,

The shadows of the rose trees patterning her face.

I have just today completed
Another grey/black painting,
Not a single primary colour
To cut across the gloom,

No splash of cadmium yellow to split the night from day.

My life is lived in shadow.
My paintings depict shadow.
The shadow of the loneliness
That chills me to the bone,

Chills me every hour you are not painting here beside me.

Colours make our language,
Words are often secondary,
Bland monotones we use
To pass the time of day,

Yet your voice is music to me, a weave of vocal colours
That you spin without a care, my bride with laughing eyes.

My neighbours voice is dull,
Her choice of words monotonous,
Entirely artificial.
Her eyes seem lost in shadow.

Your eyes, they always dazzle. Your kisses sweet as Calvados.

When we sit and paint together
Sunlight dances off our brushes;
The palette that we share
More vivid than summer roses.

Our house will zing with arias when you come back home in June.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 20th. - 22nd. - 25th. 2018.

Backstreet Garden West Hendon.

I look out of the bedroom window at my garden,
A postage stamp of green
Stuck on a large square of concrete
Hemmed in by high brick walls;
A letter going no where.
I share this tiny space with wasps and woodlice,
Ants, worms, slugs, escargot, the occasional butterfly.
Once in a while a bee inspects the weeds and loganberries,
The roses taller than an average man.

I look up at the sun, a rare visitor to this scruffy bit of garden,
And watch its slow trajectory over roof tops,
The vandalised cherry trees.
An average star deep in the multiverse
Around which our planet hovers like a moth
Addicted to heat and guaranteed luminescence.
An average star once worshipped by Attic Greeks
As handsome Helios guiding unruly steeds.

Greek mythology still dazzles my imagination
As powerfully as when a child I read at school
A simplified text of Homer
That cut out all the gods and naughty bits.
I dote on visual images, not incontrovertible equations,
That is why the Attic Greeks made perfect sense
To a child who would rather paint than do his sums,
And had a taste for Keats, Shakespeare and Shelley.

My garden only catches the evening sun
When our ageing star is dipping in the west
En route to the hills of California,
Not the deeps of Okeanos and a well earned night in bed.
This patch of ground is so tiny, so inconsequential,
That passers by hardly notice it exists
When rushing to and fro from home to work,
Or making a bee line for the Claddagh Ring.
But I can sit outside in the golden hour of light
And read The White Goddess, The Guardian, Salman Rushdie,
The Bible, early Marx, my Homer with the suitors put back in.
Or set my telescope up at 9 o`clock - upon the garden table -
And look towards Andromeda, or the russet face of Mars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 18th. 2018.

Toy Box.

Writing my poems is like opening up a toy box,
A magical toy box packed with wayward puppets
That never obey the fingers that tug the strings,
Or lie stone still when packed away to slumber.
The Moor, the Ballerina, and china faced Petrouchka
Are placid little dolls compared to these
Creatures of mayhem and unreasonable frivolity
That try to take control of my comfy little world.

I dip into the toy box every now and then
Trusting luck, not judgement, as I seek for new ideas
Down in the secret depths of the old container.
Out pop a dazzle of colours, a free for all of images
Vying for attention, offering phoney love
As I try to formulate order out of chaos, find a meaning
Where a meaning never was. Eventually circles are squared,
Orderly lines are drawn, puppets put in their places
And taught to dance to the beat of the wizard`s wand.

All this seems to happen without help or hindrance,
Unplanned, unscheduled, no choreography assembled.
A meticulous brand new poem, all prim and proper,
Shapes itself onto the page, pirouettes out of the toy box
Without a "by your leave", or a nod of "thanks" to the author.
Okay. So that`s one more scrap of verse to slot into the folder
But how I came to write it, I really cannot say.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 14th. 2018.

Owl in Winter. (Revised).

Short days.
The cold nights encourage the work of the Owl,
Sharpen his appetite,
Test his skill.
Between the birth and death of the silent moon
He must make a kill.

Hunched in his jacket of wings
The Owl sits still and waits,
His heart scarcely beating. -
A precision crafted machine
Primed to perfection
By robot engineering,
His keen eyes, laser slicing the dark,
Scan the forest for prey.

The wind, incising the undergrowth like a surgeon
Employing a scalpel to make a perfect cut,
Reveals the zigzag movements of a vole
Darting for cover.
Keen eyes examine the trauma.
That instant life and death have just one face.

A cry stark as the winter forests
Acts as prologue to the deed of terror.
Quick talons grip and claw.

Wisely the Owl hones silence like a blade,
His iron secret,
A silence that hangs like arctic water
Knifing toward the snow.
This is the Owl in his moon cold fury,
The barb and craft of a dark vocation
His infinite skill.
Only the sunlight can mellow his actions,
Moulding his wings around sleep.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 18th. 1972. - September 6th. 2012.
June 17th. - 18th. 2016. - May 11th. - 12th. 2018.

Mill Hill. (Plus Note to Poem).

I love to walk in these fields at midnight,
Feel the earth breathing beneath my feet,
A stressed out mother deep in slumber.

I love to sit still on the south facing slope,
Watch galaxies pulse through magical skies,
A trillion heart beats in the tumult of space.

I love especially the warm June nights
When I can hear wandering foxes cry
Across distances only the fiercest would travel.

This is my dream time, private and holy,
When I can look further than daylight allows,
Or sense the depths lost far beneath silence
Where linger the ghosts of ancestral voices:

Ancestors who farmed where executives` houses
Now litter the fields where hay was once scythed,
And Wilberforce built his plain little church.

I love to walk in these fields at midnight,
The slope overlooks where the farm once nestled
Among English Elms taller than spires.

But the trees have all gone, and the grand little houses
Huddle together, row upon row,
Like strangers lost in the promised land.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 1966. - May 5th. - 6th. - 9th. 2018.

Note to Poem. This poem remains very much an example of the style that I was trying to achieve in the nineteen sixties when I was close to the London Hippies, but never fully integrated into their life style. While approving their interest in communal living and mysticism, I was critical of their lazy thinking and the taking of mind altering drugs. I sketched the prototype to this poem in 1966, but could never pull the various strands together to weave a completed picture. It was only when I discovered that members of my mothers` family had farmed fields on what is now the edge of the green belt to the north of London that I was given a context in which to place my ideas. They farmed the land as far back as the earliest years of the nineteenth century, and witnessed the building of St. Paul`s Church that was founded by William Wilberforce  because the handful of local villagers were having to walk several miles to attend the Sunday services. The suburban housing that encroached on the heights of Mill Hill in the first forty years of the twentieth century, seem banal and out of place in the context of the remaining fields and the ragged clumps of trees and bushes.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. May 9th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.2..

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.2..:       Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection, A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape Like a fraught dream that...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.1

Trevor J Potter's Art: Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.1:               Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection, A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape Like a fraught d...

Delayed Spring. (Revised).

A week of snow prophesied.
Sirius scratching a chill clear sky
Confirms the weatherman,
His crystal ball proved accurate.

You say you want to move in with me?
Your camper not fit for purpose,
The motor defunct.
Parked under a grove of icicles,
The makeshift roof half off.

Yes, you had better move in with me;
Your presence on the sofa in the front room
Would make my house seem cosy,
Would bring the glitz of Eden that much closer.
And besides, you are not really a country girl,
Although you were born in a wagon,
The moon glinting through old lace.
Out in all weathers is not your style,
And we both hate living like hermits.

Yes, you had better move in quickly,
The heirloom that your grandmother gave me
Would easily fit your finger,
And you wont run off with my cash
The moment the weather turns fine.
Your honesty is not overrated,
You would rather starve than steal.

So burn that old camper, sell your dogs and chickens
To the lady who lives down the lane,
She will give you the price of your ticket.
Even if the snow should last a full year
Your smile will awaken my garden.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 26th. - 27th. - April 30th. - May 1st. - 4th. 2018.

Birthday Blues.

This is the birthday my mother never reached,
The birthday that she most looked forward to.

This morning I study my face in the steamed up mirror.
Not too young. Not too old.
But perhaps my features are just a mask after all,
An actors mask designed to show a calm
That I have rarely felt, or rarely looked for.
For seventy five years I have been marooned on this planet,
The raging storm my natural environment.

My attempts at humour are usually oafish,
But no thing is permanent, no thing can stay the same.
These hands that once danced easily upon the cello strings
Are now twisted out of shape,
And music is something I can only dream about.
I listen to unaccompanied Bach on the radio
And mock my inability to play one coherent note.

Tomorrow I shall go and study the paintings of Monet,
Perhaps his painterly eye for the natural world
Will fill me with wonder, calm my anger at time,
But more likely not.
I shall be in a part of London I lived in when very young
And all the people I knew then are just photographs in my album.
I have long ago given up looking for friendly faces
In the hectic squall of the throng.

This is the birthday my mother never reached,
The birthday that she most looked forward to.
This morning I study my face in the bathroom mirror
And wonder if she would recognise me now.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 26th. 2018.
My mother died just three weeks short of her seventy fifth birthday in 1991.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. (Rewritten).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. (Rewritten).: Tussy was not buried, Not swaddled by black earth Evolving into hillocks and                         dark hollows Gradually, season by ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Chinese Box.(Two Poems).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Chinese Box.(Two Poems).:       Chinese Box. No.1. No sun. No moon. A temple carved from soft wood. Two white herons on the water. Black sky. Black stream.  ...

Caliban. (Companion poem to "Miranda" and to "Prospero").

Hi Miranda,
I Caliban am not your servant,
That is Ferdinand,
That frail wimp of a log carrier
Lodged in my mother`s cave,
The shackles cutting his ankles.

He is just a pawn in your father`s game,
Another victim of White Man politics
Who must marry you
Just to keep the peace
Between two ageing brothers.

Meanwhile I shall continue to play the fool
In his snotty nosed presence,
That Ferdinand,
Bowing before him as he tends the dung fire
Before I sneak off to your bedroom.

We have been together for quite some years,
Miranda,
And I don`t see why we have to break up
Just because of an arranged marriage
Brokered by Prospero, your irate father,
That Boss Man with the straggling grey beard.

Mother Nature is far stronger than Politics,
She has never carried a health warning,
A codex of rules, Miranda,
And besides,
Your father is merely a Book Bound Magician,
He has to read up every spell before he castes it,
Wasting a boat load of candles.
My Egyptian mama could not read nor write
But she taught me the secrets of our magical island.

So remember Miranda, when you set out for Milan
I shall be sailing along under cover,
Stowed away with the luggage and cattle,
The books I will save from the library.
I shall teach you how to keep secrets,
How to climb out of windows at midnight
To meet up with me, and my messenger Ariel.
That brave new world you will enter
Cannot now be complete without me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 13th. 2018.

Prospero. (A Companion poem to "Miranda".)

Miranda
My eyes are full of stories
That you could read
If you glanced back over your shoulder
For just one moment.

Meantime
I sit in the corner by the bookcase
Watching you quietly walk
Out of the Living Room
Into the unlit hall.

Yes
The scope of my realm is small,
No larger than the ground floor of my house,
The curtains closed,
The front door bolted,

The carpets thick with dust.
Yes
This is the world I own,
My private magic island
Fashioned from bricks and mortar,

The only world you know.
Meantime
The storm my books unleashed is changing all things,
Smashing the shoreline, tearing trees apart,
Wrecking ships in the harbour,

Bringing your future husband to seek shelter
In the cave where the logs are stored.
You will find him there tomorrow,
But tonight you must sleep alone
Unaware of the vows you will take.

If you could look through my eyes
You would know all this,
Miranda,
But you have always lacked the foresight
To seek beyond the walls

Of our home that is smaller than most.
I need only a handful of books
To study to shape the future,
But you need far more than I have.

You need the voice of a stranger
To call you out of your dark room.
You need the freedom to love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 18th. 2018.

I do not like Prospero very much, I think he is a bit of a control freak, but sadly, I seem to understand him far too well. Perhaps I will prefer Caliban when I make a study of him.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.: Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet? Hitch a lift on the wind? No cancelled trains. No queues for petrol. No traffic jams we...

(1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.

Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet?
Hitch a lift on the wind?
No cancelled trains.
No queues for petrol.
No traffic jams wearing out the brakes.
You could be with me in merely half a minute,
Flying from door to door,
From bedroom to bedroom.
The carpet parked securely under the table
As though it had always lain there,
An integral item of my Dining Room.

Your voice is just an echo down the line,
And the photographs you send me, flat unfocused images
That lack the living warmth
Of your sleeping body snuggled up to mine.
Oh how I miss the laughter and the tears,
The shared Sufi trance of peaceful nights
When we just cannot let go of one another,
A Sufi Heaven is when I am with you.

Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet?
A Paradise Garden woven just for us
On a great loom in Safavid Isfahan.
Craft magic woven for us
Six centuries before we were born.
Love, I am not cut out to be an ageing hermit,
And your rent free metal caravan, that sieve,
Is no fit home for you,
Nor for your pack of troublesome, brown eyed,
Long haired Lurchers
That poach rabbits for your table.

Women make the most competent airline pilots,
Or so you have often confided,
That is why the magic carpet is not in my keeping,
But was entrusted to you.
The barometer is now forecasting perfect weather,
Perfect for flying.
So now is the time to pack your scant belongings,
Unroll the carpet and speed due south to me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 9th.2018.

Note. My daughter Natasha suggested that reading this Poem was like actually taking a ride on The Magic Carpet, instantly moving from place to place, moment to moment. This for me is most evident in how the carpet is one instant flying from Leicester to London, and the next is in situ under my Dining Room table.  This is how Magic Carpet journeys are supposed to happen, one moment the carpet and passenger are in one location, the next they are in another. To me this is a kind of visualization of telepathic communication, a form of communication that I have experienced many times, especially with people I love. Modern science has yet to prove, or disprove, that telepathy actually happens, but we know less about the human brain than we do about the Solar System and far off galaxies, and we know almost nothing about other dimensions, black matter, etc. I have never allowed science, public opinion, local custom or religion to close my mind. Magic Carpets are of course only symbols of aspiration, but on Persian Carpets are woven symbolic patterns representing the Garden of Paradise. Maybe that is a destination we all hope to achieve, hope to achieve through the powers of genuine love, which is always both spiritual and physical. God Is Love.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 11th. April 2018.

Amedeo Modigliani.

These faces are not masks,
The thick layers of make up
Accentuate beauty,
Change fault lines into graceful
                                  highlights,
Flatter strong cheek bones.
The jobbing critic must have
                  screwed up his eyes
When confronted with such
                     graceful opulence
Dragged from the streets of Paris.
He did not see what even I can see
As I hurry passed.


And look how sensitive the glance
                                      of her eyes,
This girl with the raven hair
Looking shyly back over her shoulder
Into the gaze of the artist
As he maps her exposed body
Stretched awkwardly onto the old
                                      single bed.
He works with the skill of a cartographer,
Or a surgeon. His concentration absolute
As he guides the fine brush.


He studies her body with the eyes of
                                        the sculptor
He once was
Before the stone dust scoured tubercular
                                                  lungs
And forced him to revert to paint.
Perhaps he paid her more
Than the customary five Francs.
Perhaps he just could not afford to.
Something about her makes me think
                                                  this girl
Was a favourite model,
Someone he cared for more than a means
                                                to an end,
Someone he respected
And would speak to in the street,
An equal not just an employee.
A young girl who saw through his professional mask,
Who was aware of his vulnerability.
Something in the tilt of her head
Tells me this is true.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 3rd. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: This Maundy Thursday Night. (Revised).: Kneeling in the silent chapel I study the blank walls where my favourite icons should be and sense the infinite shadowing me in a cold ...

Palm Sunday 2018. (At Home).

I love my house
My monastery
My hermitage upon the hill
Where I can sit and read my books
Paint my pictures
Write my stories
Dream my dreams in solitude.

I love my icons on the walls
The Cross of Christ
The smile of Buddha
The saints in their gilded worlds
Tallis on the radio.
I love the simple things of life,
Solid chairs and tables.

I love the strength of wood and stones,
Simple food on china plates
Tea fresh from the farmer.
I love the look of ancient books
Parables in ink and paper,
They lose their lustre in the sun
Like daffodils at Easter.

I love the heft of Cranmer`s words
Rock solid in their meaning.
I love the choirs of migrant birds
Singing in my garden.
I love the stillness in my house
When I kick off my weathered boots
And close the door behind me.

I love my house, my quiet place,
My church without an altar.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 25th. - 26th. 2018.
The best present I received last Christmas consisted of packets of tea straight from a farm in India. (I do not use the word Plantation because that reeks too much of the British Empire). Also, in many ways I prefer Lent and Holy Week to Easter Day, probably because it is a time of study and contemplation. The pale beauty of the daffodils symbolise this time of year for me, after Easter the gaudy fairground colours of summer come roaring in.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Non Creative Walk About. (Revised): I took a poem for a walk Around the houses, Looking for a place to settle, To store our goods, Our clothes and chattels, To safely cal...

Two Poems. (1) Equinox. (2) The Ripples Spread.

                    1.

             Equinox.


This I have waited to see
                for a long time.
The spring sunshine
Cutting the ice to ribbons,
Melting the snow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 2018.


                   2.

   The Ripples Spread.


Last night I heard your voice
Calling my name
Out loud to the stars that seemed
                                          as still
As stones glistening under water;
You alone in rural Leicestershire,
I in my London house. -
You had not used your phone
                   to contact me,
To share with me the hurt
That open wounds of long term
                         separation
Inflict upon our lives.
You simply cried out to the
                         Milky Way,
And my house became the fields
Through which you walked,
The ceilings opened to the silent
                                              stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th.2018. 

The Wrong Picture. (New Poem).

I did not know that pain
Could come back with such intensity,
Could spike deep a second time.

The girl in this photograph,
So like an old girlfriend,
An acquaintance from the 1990`s,
But no, not her, not her.

The street is in the wrong country,
The sky too pale a blue,
Too Wind flower blue,
Too Nordic, too washed out.

I drop the magazine in the bin,
There go my thoughts of yesterday,
Just so much retro garbage.

Must I always fall in love
With lookalikes of long lost friends?
Exist in a sepia world
Of fading reproductions?

No, but I am thinking of a different street,
Of poplars bending in the wind,
Kinder at play, their parents dozing
On verandas dark with vines.
Germany 1991,
The heat almost Mediterranean.

The girl in this magazine photograph
Would pass me by without a glance
If we met on a crowded side walk.
But her pale blue eyes, her mousy hair,
The tilt of her smile towards the light,
Are dangerously familiar.

I retrieve the magazine from the bin -
Then discard it once again.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 25th. - March 18th. 2017.
March 19th. 2018.
Retrieved from disorderly scraps of a poem jotted down last year, then completely rewritten.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Miranda. (Revised Version): Miranda You do not know how beautiful                                        you are Hiding behind your hair                           ...

Miranda. (Revised Version)

Miranda
You do not know how beautiful
                                       you are
Hiding behind your hair
                                 and glasses,
The broad brim of your hat,
The book pressed to your nose.


Your mind,
            a makeshift dolls house
Lost deep in shady groves
On Prospero`s magic island
Is labelled, Out Of Bounds,
The blinds drawn down,
The door closed tight,
The key lost deep in leaf mould.
It seems that wary Prospero
Has tied you to his will
With infinite chains of shadow
That only love can break.


Miranda,
I am your father`s servant,
Perhaps one day you will stun me
                                  with a smile
Awakening birdsong
Echoing Ariel`s call
As he breaks free from the pine tree
That had been his prison cell
For twelve years and a day,
Meantime I dream you picking at ideas
Snatched from the books that pack your
                                        father`s library,
Flinging them high into into the island
                                                        air,
But not watching where they fall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,.
July 13th. - 2017. - March 13th. - 14th. - 18th.2018.
Whose thoughts are these, Ferdinand`s or Caliban`s?   Both, in very different ways, could describe themselves as being a servant of Prospero. One as the prospective son in law, but temporary prisoner,
the other as the enslaved former owner of the island. Both, in very different ways, were attracted to Miranda like moths to the flame. Both suffered burns, administered by Prospero.

Harsh Times

Knocking on my window
The shadows of lost children
Trying to break through
Or is it just the rain
Or is it just the rain
Trying to break through
Wash away the glass
That keeps me dry and warm
That keeps me safe not sorry
While the wind knocks down the chimneys
And lifts the mossy slates

Knocking on my window
Knocking on my window
The homeless unloved children
Rough sleepers lodged in doorways
Beggars in the subways
Hands cupped for gifts of money
Hands bruised and red with cold
Shadow children pleading
While their matches flare then die

I turn over in my bed
To try to get some sleep
But all the time the knocking
But all the time the knocking
Shadow children knocking
Trying to break through
Trying to break through
The gypsy in the ditch
The orphan in the doorway
The match girl in the snow

Tonight beneath the bridges
Huddled into cardboard boxes
The homeless watch the rain
The homeless watch the rain
While I lie snug in bed
Warm as toast and safe not sorry
But all the time the knocking
But all the time the knocking
The shadows of lost children
Trying to break through


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
March 12th. 2018.
In recent bitter weather I saw a homeless man at the entrance to London Bridge Tube Station trying to keep warm by striking matches. People were passing by staring deep into their magic phones but seeing nothing. We may be technologically advanced but morally we are stuck deep into the sticky quagmire of inequality that polluted the 19th. century. We may have wi-fi and high-fi and messages stored in the air but in other ways we are stuck in the 1840`s. Dickens is still a contemporary writer.

The Return of the Traveller.

Displayed by the window
My miniature rose tree
Greets the hubbub of dawn
With a whisper of Spring
That lisps through the whole house.
It lights up your smile when you call.

This time your radio
Is packed in your suitcase
Along with the shower gel
Your pants and your nightie
Your copy of Oliver Twist.
You seem to be planning
A long term vacation,
Much more than a year and a day.

Your spot on the sofa
Has now been made ready
The cushions plumped up
The footstool in place.
The fridge has been stocked
With your favourite goodies
Along with the the milk shakes
The meat and the veg.

I have trimmed my rough beard
To eliminate straggle,
But believe me I wont cut it off.
And please keep your trainers
In the rack by the back door
And don`t scrub your teeth in my bed.

I have set down the lamp
By the miniature rose tree,
Closed the thick curtains,
Dimmed the bright light.
Our love is not blind,
It glitters with wonders.
I smooth down the duvet
And kiss you goodnight.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 8th. - 9th. 2018.
Since early childhood I have loved Alice Through the Looking Glass, and to a lesser extent, Alice in Wonderland. I think we all spend our lives balanced between fantasy and reality, even when we appear to be at our most concentrated and alert. I particularly love the state of mind present in very vivid dreams, and those hazy moments poised between waking and sleeping, when nothing is certain, nothing is concrete.

Memorials. (After listening to Madama Butterfly on the radio).

                    1.

My paintings are the poems
I cannot write,
Songs without words
Preserved in stillness.
Likewise the photos,
Static portraits of far off times
Silent
Silent
Ice cold                           silent.
Memorial stones bereft of flowers.

                    2.

Your signature
                              In my pocket book
Is dated 1967.
A vivacious moment in a too short life
Preserved forever on a yellowing page.
None of the photos that hang on the wall
                                              Are vivid
As this singular word
Shaped to the rhythms
That danced in your voice.

                  3. 

My paintings are the poems
I cannot write,
Butterfly carcasses
Pinned behind glass.
They shadow the stories I cannot speak,
The sorrow      too deep      for language. 


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 4th. - 5th. 2018.                   

Trevor J Potter's Art: Last Night I Became Aware of the Beauty of Wood. (...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Last Night I Became Aware of the Beauty of Wood. (...: Last night I became aware of the beauty of wood, A beauty I had been taught to disregard By parents in love with modern things, With gla...