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.
No comments:
Post a Comment