(1) British Museum. (2) Impressions on a Winters Night.(Original Version). (3) Grief.

               1

 British Museum.


Photography is so un zen.
This girl has been gone 50 years;
The leaves did not stop falling.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 28th. - December 4th. 2015.
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                2.

Impressions on a Winters Night. (Revised).


Sat and watched The Silence
As though it were truly silent;
Not a word heard.
Lips moving on paper faces,
Masks etched on shadows.
This is how I`ve pictured wartime.
Grey vistas. Life a struggle.
Hands held over faces.

The limping man,
Whey faced, always speechless,
Hobbling slowly home from work;
Khaki coat, unbuttoned, soiled;
A fag held in yellow fingers;
Army boots, jet black mirrors.

At night the curtains were pulled tight
To cover taped up bedroom windows,
Blotting out pin pricks of light.

The house was silent.
Two sisters slept in single beds.
A child slept in a cot between them.

An old man stared up at the clock,
He could not read it in the dark.
"70 years gone like a dream", he said.

The limping man passed by the door,
Army boots, jet black mirrors,
Polished until they cracked like ice,

Boots of ice reflecting nothing.

"That`s old Jack Frost hobbling by"
My sleepy aunt sadly whispered.

I nearly did believe her.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 16th. - 17th. - 19th. 2015.

Footnote to this poem.

Impressions on a Winters Night was written after I watched Ingmar Bergman`s film The Silence with the sound turned off, and realized how closely the surreal mood resembled my recollections of living as a small child in wartime London. A new version that I much prefer was posted on 27th. December 2016.

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                   3.

               Grief.


Now that you are dead
Paper flowers in the vase
Have turned as grey as ash,
Grey as your brittle bones
Hidden in the earth.

And yet our yesterday
Is as clear and bright as spring
In the confines of my mind.

But only in my mind.-

I wander streets we used to walk together
To find that park where once or twice we played
Football in the rain.
You girls always bested me at sport.

I find a patch of grass that seems familiar,
The gates locked for the night,
The swings replaced by slides;
Not the sort of place where we could conjure dreams
Out of urban squalor,
Although, My Christ, we tried!

Just a gap between the houses,
A blank space marred by shadows,
Somewhere to avoid.

I do not long for death,
But without you life seems empty,
A blind that`s pulled down hard
To hide the waning sun -
The frail November light.

I do not long for death,
But I need a private sanctuary
Where I can put to rest
This dark remorseless pain.

My love for you has almost wrecked my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Poem sketched August 30th. - 31st. - September 8th. 2015.
Rethought and completely rewritten December 18th. 2015.