The Bethlehem Angel.(New Version).

The plaster falls away,
And gradually,
Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis,
The gold angel is glimpsed
Shimmering in the dusty gloom,
A burnished icon,
A cleansed mirror touched by the morning sun
For the first time since Byzantium was crushed.

The clouds of dust that speck the summer air
Shape a curtain adrift between two worlds
A millennium apart
But linked by a common, timeless language,
Sung in daily prayers.
Outside the church the soldiers stride in pairs
Oblivious to the miracle taking place
Behind the battered doors.
Armed sons of Abraham, of tortured Isaac,
Patrolling where the sacred Lamb was born.

Indeed it truly is a perfect miracle
That the angel should return in this dark time
Of bitter conflict in the streets outside
Between related cultures.
Muslim and Christian children shot and maimed
While playing in the dust that Joseph trod
When guiding Mary to her bed of straw.

The archaeologist cleans the angel`s head,
A mosaic presence glistening through the gloom
Of incense heavy air
That fills the nave enriched by echoing chants.
And as we stand in awe of this rare icon
Of hope restored, of trust, of infinite grace,
It seems the angelic face reveals our wonder
To reflect back to us who we really are.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 30th. - 31st. 2016.(New Version).
Radically revised March 8th. 2017.

(1) Miss Price, Her Ballad. (2) Perhaps or maybe not......

                     1.

Miss Price, Her Ballad.


An alert Eagle face,
Eyes calm, yet feral,
Body straight, yet shapely,
So like a slim renaissance angel
Leaning over a river
As though it were a glass.

Legs, graceful as a heron`s
Wading slowly through the shallows
Of a sparkling Asian river,
The hunted fish darting swiftly
Deep into a maze of shadows
Under a copse of tangled reeds.

Legs slimmer, yet more lovely
Than those observed in neat processions
Of sleepwalking cat walk models
Eyes focused on the stars.
They wanted you to join their ranks
But you loved life more than money.

You loved life in the cold fields,
Fingers raw from picking fruit,
Black mud heavy on your boots.
You loved those fields, the goshawks cry,
The leaping greyhounds snatching rabbits
You knocked to death with a cudgel.

You were born to hunt and barter,
Shoe a horse, herd the cows,
Not strut your stuff at fashion shows.
Your choice was right, Miss Josey Price,
And here you laugh and snuggle to me,
Brown as a berry and wise to the world.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 24th. - 25th. 2016.

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                    2.

   Perhaps or maybe not......


The man sitting opposite me is not smiling at me
or at any of the other passengers.
We are scenary,
                          something to hang the day on.


Perhaps he is smiling at someone he is traveling to meet
on this early morning train,
                          or the partner he has left at home in bed
in an apartment I shall not visit
                          except perhaps by chance.


Perhaps he is smiling at nobody at all,
                          just a furtive image that flicked across his mind
The instant he switched off his phone.


Whatever his motives, his real life situation,
                          his cheeky smile has spread so broad and wide
it soon fills the whole subway carriage
                          with a shy ephemeral light.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
First sketched October 25th. 2015.
Completely rewritten May 7th. - 8th. - 9th. 2016.

(1) Two Love Poems, Perhaps.. (2) Weekdays on the Northern Line.

                     1.

Two Love Poems, Perhaps..


My little white yacht,
Beached on the shore of my heart.
Please do not sink little boat.
Please please please do not sink.


                     *


My little white bird
Perched high up in a window.
Your wings are clipped, little bird.
If you flap them hard you may fall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 20th. 2016.
Written while listening to Erik Satie.

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

                    2.

Weekdays on the Northern Line. (Random notes scribbled on a journey).


The red blue and silver anaconda
Slid out of the tunnel,
A nightmare inflicted on the poor of London
Slicing through a deep moist wound.

How can I write love poems on the Underground
When such conceits come readily to mind?
The stations rattling by in the permanent darkness,
Linked by an unravelled loom of wires.

Perhaps the pulsing membranes deep beneath our skins
Are the best metaphors we can have for love?
A shadow clouding a face can mean many things,
But a look of pain is more loving than a smile.

I crouch low in my seat, trying hard not to be there,
My book left opened at "rode down to Camelot".
This subterraneum universe of whey faced people
Only comes to life when the lights go out.

I dream of gothic towers edged with beaten gold
Glinting under pale enamelled skies,
The world on the surface is made of steel and glass,
No chance that Elaine could encounter Lancelot.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 17th. - 18th. 2016.

(1) Injured Swans. (2) A Love Not Spoken.

                     1.

          Injured Swans.



Love
Are you transforming yourself
Into a swan?
Flapping
Your shopping bags and the white
                                           sleeves
Of your winter coat
Like wings?
You scampered across the empty street
Ahead of me,
Dropping your head so low
To avoid my gaze.

I was afraid
That you would trip and fall
On the sharp uneven paving stones
As you ran headlong
Without looking,
Hands grasping those long handled bags
In case they took off on the cold wind
Without you.

Your shyness so cruel it overcame
All common sense,
Forced you to turn your eyes away
From my quick glance
The instant that I came in view.

I feared you might be struck by cars,
By flying glass,
By sticks and stones,
The intricate ballet of cups and plates,
Of paper straws and plastic spoons
That spiralled through the air above you.

                                            Love
Next time you wish to imitate
Swans rising from a troubled lake,
Or herons leaning into flight,
Chuck out your fear,
                              Take hold my hand,
Then we might leap the moon together
Or hug the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 16th. 2016.

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

                    2.

    A love Not Spoken.


 
She phones me with her
                         thoughts,
   But never says a word.


I know what she is thinking
Although no
                 words are spoken.

                                         
Her pale smile in a dark
room
      Tells a book of stories,


           All our yesterdays
In one     small      glance.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 11th. 2016.

(1) The Displaced Chieftain. - A Lament.(2) The Nightmare of an Ancient Woodlander.

                           1.

The Displaced Chieftain. - A Lament.


An old man dreams of Scotland,
He wishes to be home
Beside the rushing waters
That shape the ancient stones.

He recalls his father`s fortress
Now sinking to decay
Deep in the wind shook forests
Where he used to fight and play.

He galloped upon Black Hunter
Each evening through the glen.
He became a champion horseman
Before the age of ten.

But now he is old and broken
Hunched up in a fireside chair,
So alone in an English cottage,
So haunted by fear and prayer.

He dreams that his ancient freedom
Has become a festering wound,
Like the scars in the walls of the fortress
That are slowly filling with sand.

He wants to rest unnoticed
Where the granite can hide his bones
Until the rushing waters
Break down the mountain stones.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 30th. - September 3rd 1982.
May 15th. 2008.

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

                           2.

The Nightmare of an Ancient Woodlander.



I used to love my work deep in the forest,
But now I hate it.
Vigilant packs lurking in dark places
Haunt my days.
Red eyed, wolf faced, stealthy hunters
Kill for no reason;
Kill lost strangers who venture in their way.
Kill refugees stranded between bleak borders,
Caught without friends, guards, selfless protectors,
Guides with maps and rudimentary torches,-
The storm ripped trees crashing down around them,
Roots torn out,
Branches shredded like ruptured veins.

I used to love my work deep in the forest,
But now water meadows and lush pastures suit me
Where I can walk at ease among wise children,
Acolytes of the wild Diana:
But no hob goblins,
No mute Adonis chased by savage hounds,
No Oberon intent to steal a child,
Dare cross these hallowed fields.
I can walk at ease along the verdant pathways,
The still lake almost lost beneath the reeds.

I used to love my work deep in the forest,
But now dark forces out of my control
Have smashed my feral heart into a million pieces;
My dearest friends revealed as spiteful racists,
Their gentle hands compacted into fists.
It now appears I am the hated changeling,
An outsider fit for the firing squad,
Or prison camps built by a modern Theseus.
And because my long time lover is a Gypsy,
A girl with freedom etched deep in her soul,
A votaress of the wild Titania,
They harass us with curses, with two edged axes,
To drive us both from out the woodland green.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.   
March 28th. - 29th. - April 16th. 2016.
Reimagined May 10th. - 11th. - 12th. - 13th. - 16th. 2016.

                      Note to this poem.

The sources for this poem include two plays by Shakespeare, The Midsummer Night`s Dream and The Two Noble Kinsmen, the refugee crises in Europe and the rise in the activities of neo Nazis. The folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm have also been an influence, especially those stories connected to the vast German forests. I once heard a radio talk in which it was suggested that Hitler and his cohorts were the darkest nightmares forged in the deep forests made actual, brought to visceral life, and it is true that the top echelons of the Nazi Party seemed to be occupied by creatures of myth rather than normal people. Other sources to this poem include the various influences that refugees have had on my family. My ex wife`s paternal grandparents fled the programs and the revolution that erupted in the Russian Empire during 1905, while my Greek Orthodox aunt had to leave Petrograd in 1918 because she had married an English diplomat, and the British government had sided with the Whites and not the Bolsheviks. Thirty two years later her brother died in Stalin`s Gulag. But the principle sources for this poem were the anti refugee diatribes that started to pollute the pages of facebook in late 2015 and early 2016, and the racist treatment that has been meted out to my fiance from time to time simply because her mother was born a Roma Gypsy.    

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 12th. - 13th. 2016.

Mayhem Nights and Dreams.(Revised).

Dripping down from the darkened ceiling
Invisible hair of stalactites overhang the childs face
As she dreams of feral Gypsies,
Elves, seal skinned Silkies,
The hidden high wire artistes of the night
Dancing through the air above her head,
Or sliding down the ice cold stalactites
From one ephemeral world view to another
Without a by your leave,
Without an airline ticket,
Without a visa or a valid passport.

And while the wild child sleeps they fill her mind
With torrid dreams of fantastical lovers,
Disguised as urbane pirates;
Of dogs and cats and horses
Invited home to supper;
Of changelings hatched at twilight
When the Barn Owl swoops;
Of tantrums orchestrated to scare off pesky mother.

Well, that is her real world,
The world we share with her
When we ditch our daylight talk of mortgages,
Of debts, of risky deals,
Of stocks and shares and phantasmagoric money;
Of bale outs and witless promises.
Her night world of wild dreams is our true world
Where we masquerade with Puck among veiled shadows
In a fierce pursuit of anarchistic freedom
Under the feckless moon.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 5th. 2016.

Written after enjoying a performance of Midsummer Night`s Dream at The Globe Bankside. Also, in the mix of day to day life and the controlling undercurrent of our dream world, which would like to overturn all order with supernatural violence, anarchistic, not anarchic, is the appropriate word to use in this poem.

(1) In the British Museum.(Revised) (2) The Stone Paste Pot. (3) April Snow.

                       1

    In the British Museum.


Blue and white ceramics,
Small moments of absolute quietness
In a room packed with chattering tourists.

I am reminded of last Sunday by the lake,
Only the sound of a stone skimming the surface
Making me look up from my book.

I had put aside my copy of Hamlet
And was reading Omar Khayyam in the twilight
To bring some peace to my mind.

But just now, as I studied a vase, Iranian 17th. Century,
I heard that woman nearby talk of Ophelia.
That woman with the odd imperious accent,
So like yours when you were young.

And in an instant I became aware of the spidery cracks
Deep in the ancient glaze,
The split in the rim of the vase.

"So that`s how it always is", I silently cursed,
"Love has never been a reliable peace maker,
And rocks get thrown without warning".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 2nd. - 3rd. - 4th. 2016.  

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

                 2.

  The Stone Paste Pot.


This blue pot is a single sturdy poem,
Not quite complete, the handle missing,
The Arabic inscription like a wave
Disturbing the still water
But not reaching the shore.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 2nd. - 3rd. 2016. 

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                  3.

              
                April Snow.


                 April Snow
A veil covering a young brides face
             To hide her tears.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 4th. 2016