Between Two Winter Storms. (Revised)

Today the sky is sackcloth and ashes.
Early spring blossom smothers the earth.

Gaunt trees sway like desolate women
Gathering flowers for a stone cradle.

Ice tears fall hour upon hour
Into a roofless row of houses
Boarded up ready for the wrecker`s ball.

The concrete paths have cracked like china;
The cherished gardens are thick with bracken;
The front doors bang in the truculent wind.

The Routemaster bus takes me deep into town;
I cannot keep my eyes away from the window,
Nothing is how it was last summer.

I note that the street is packed with strangers;
The Bloomsbury Squares unkempt and padlocked,
Their coral red roses hacked down with a saw.

The Empire had lost the Mandate of Heaven,
I read in my book on the Han Dynasty.

Last night the storm smashed slate tiles and fences. . .
I could not find a moment to sleep.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 6th.-7th. - 10th. 2016.

I was on the way to visit the Chinese Porcelain collection at the British Museum when the ideas for this poem came to me. Coral Red is the name given to some plain colour artifacts, so you can make up your minds as to whether the hacked down roses are natural plants or vandalised works of art. I would also like to mention the poems of Du Fu. I originally gave this poem the title After The Storm,but then I read the weather forecast and discovered that the storms were not over, more high winds were predicted. This poem is both personal and political, like all things in life.