Sabatha of the Twenty Eight Stars.

Lifting the veil that only I can lift
I meet your eyes, blue and piercing,
seeing me as I truly am.

Debussy on the radio
reminds me that your home in France
may soon become a distant dream,

and my beloved view of the Seine
an umbered text book photograph
pressed between two dusty covers.

Everything we both hold dear
taken from us for no reason
except we speak a foreign tongue,

our faces    pale    as a Yorkshire rose,
our talk discrete    between ourselves.

And religion also plays a part,
you wear a veil, I wear a cross,
two symbols that are mocked and hated.

But hope burns deeper than despair,
Because hope is a child of love,
Not of deceit and phoney war.

So when I dreamt of you last night,
your sad face lifted up to mine,
I knew that we are safe and well

and strongly bound together.
Love cannot be destroyed by loss,
or faith by separation.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 29th. 2016. - September 5th. 2016.
April 20th. 2020

The Free Wheeling Poetry of God. (New)

Jesus is a poet,
Rumi is a poet,
Perhaps God is a poet,
Perhaps?
             

                Well,
never mind the answer to this question,
that is
           if a true answer can possibly exist;-
Butterflies are resting on my rose bushes,
and the scent of thyme scintillates the garden
like a memory of times past
when monks brewed remedies for common
                                                         ailments
from their stock of herbs,
and the inquisition searched for dark skinned
                                                            heretics
observing outlawed rituals   behind locked doors.


Perhaps they would have burned me as a witch,
or used hot irons to force me to recant,
or thrown a bomb straight through my bedroom
                                                                window
at sunset as I settled down to pray.
Well,
          never mind,
those times I think are past,
and the night is very sultry,
                             very still,
and the trees outside my house are rocking gently
to the songs of nightingales.


I shall now go pack my pens into their drawer,
then dance an hour or two in my back garden,
under a roseate moon,
a barren goddess reflecting far off light,
(I always believe in magic late at night).-
My dance shall be a poem without words,
a glimpse into a mirror, veiled and dark,
that words can only desecrate with noise.

Yes, perhaps God is a poet after all,
A poet banished from all holy books.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 17th. - 25th. - 26th. - September 3rd. 2016.

This poem is all about the free association of ideas and images, and peering below the surfaces of life to glimpse hints of the truth. Nowadays we are too much enamoured of the surfaces of things and are led badly astray by this infatuation. I strongly believe that God cannot be described in words, however profound and hallowed by long use. This maybe is one of the reasons why atheism can seem to be the easy option to take up when doubt comes calling, as doubt invariably does. God is often only truly experienced outside the covers of books, outside the straight jackets of traditions. I love all holy scriptures, but take them to be guide books, however beautiful. When I walk through bustling streets or in the quiet midnight fields of rural Ireland. A such times I feel so much closer to all that is holy than when I study sentences confined between hard covers.  

(1) Escape from the Willow Garden. (2) Willow Pattern. (3) Clueless.

                 1.

Escape from the Willow Garden.


Do you remember the moment we were transformed into birds
To escape our enemies on the narrow bridge?
It did not hurt us, the sudden growing of wings,
Our fingers narrowing down into sharpened claws,
But I must admit those feathers itched a little,
Especially when we soared close to the sun,
Our Lark voices shrieking panic calls.

But our wings were not made of wax and branches
And did not melt when we rose like jets
High into the stratosphere above the garden
Where our enemies cursed and swore beneath the willows,
Before they packed their hand guns under pillows
Where they kept them in case of gang land brawls.

That night, changed once more back to man and woman,
We slept together under cherry blossom
That fell like snow upon our tired heads,
But for an hour or two after our sneak arrival
We could not regain the powers of human speech
But sat quietly by the moon flecked river
And told fantastic stories with our eyes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 16th. 2016.
----------------------------------------------------------

                2.

   Willow Pattern.



I am this shadow

You cannot hold me

Only observe the outline


Transformed into birds
We soar high above the arched bridge
Into the white sky
Briefly our song is heard
Among the Weeping Willows

The huntsman skims a stone upon the water
To shatter a fleeting image
But his aim is faulty
We have already flown far and wide
Out of reach

Later in another country
Transformed into our former selves
We sip green tea together
The simplicity of the ceremony
Instills a profound peace


Holding hands in the dark

The certainty of our love feels stronger

Than the rocks that make up the mountains


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
19th. November 2012.
----------------------------------------------------- 

                    3.

              Clueless.
   

Blind to realities
The hunter spins a stone at the images
Reflected on the river,

Meanwhile the birds have flown.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 19th. 2016.

I have loved the Willow Pattern since childhood, but it was only recently that that I learned it is an English design. So here we have it, European style porcelain decorated with an English design made up of Chinese styled images. The various legends of the fleeing lovers transformed into birds were invented even later. At some point I dreamed that the lovers fled to Japan where they lived out their lives in relative safety, hence the cherry blossom mentioned in the first poem. So here we have it, a world famous English design that could not possibly exist without a positive interaction with other cultures. And where do I stand in respect to all this. I was born in England, have a Welsh first name, a surname that can be either English, Irish or Dutch, and I have Azerbaijani, Russian, Scottish, Romani, and possibly French ancestry. I should have had a different surname, but my mother was prevented from marrying her first love, partly for political reasons. I feel very much a citizen of Europe, and my personal culture is a result of countless transactions along the Silk Road over countless centuries. This island is only one part of that story.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.  19th. July 2016.      

(1) Our First Kiss.(Revised). (2) Ornamental Tree.

              1.

    Our First Kiss.


Under the big moon
I laid you down
On the soft cool ground
By the slow cold river,
And out of your mouth
Flew a thousand birds
Singing wild songs
To welcome the Spring.

Under the big moon
When I kissed your eyes
Golden wings
Grew out of our shoulders
To raise us rejoicing
High above clouds
Threatening to shadow
The new day in rain.

Under the big moon
We first became lovers,
The galaxies spinning
Like Sufi dancers
Floating their good souls
On the music of praise.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 13th. - 15th. 2016.
-----------------------------------

              2.

   Ornamental Tree.


Breaking through the grating
The tree, refusing to be tidy,
Refusing to obey the whims of
                                      fashion,
The latest fetish of the gardener:
Has become a focal point for local
                                      children,
A sort of Maypole, a totem, a marker,
An imagined Roman obelisk,
A living image of the resurrection,
A symbolic ornament to skip and
                                dance around
As they run amok through the tidy
                                        square,
Upsetting new arrivals, disoriented
                                       tourists,
Returning holidaymakers
with their luggage stacked on wheels.


Shoots breaking through the grating
This ornamental tree is breaking out
From the tight cocoon of stone the
                       planner sanctioned
To be it`s compact home,
It`s infant cradle and eventual tomb.
A granite cradle polished so it shines
Like black ice on a wintry afternoon,
Or like a crudely manufactured mirror
Reflecting all the rushing to and fro
In front of Kings Cross station.


But this tree is like the children who
                                         adore it,
Or like the person I would wish to be,
A splash of life inside a concrete city
Breaking through the grating and the
                                               walls,
Cracking up the tedious little rules.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. May - July 15th. 2016.

When I heard that a new Open Space had been opened at Kings Cross by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, I decided that I would like to visit this new public facility. The mayor had praised the project to the moon, giving the impression that a new Trafalgar Square had been plonked in front of the austere 19th. century terminus. What I found did not match this fulsome praise, in fact it resembled nothing more than a windswept concrete desert with a tube station taking up one corner. There were however the trees, not planted in the ground, but in long stone containers that looked like coffins for long dead giants. All these trees were severely manicured, no bulging roots, no branches out of place. One tree however was not doing what was expected of it. Stray shoots and bits of root were breaking through the grating on top of the stone cradle, little flourishes of natural life. Instantly I loved that tree, a little bit of bold life in a concrete graveyard.

My Blonde Priestess. (New Version).

Perhaps, now that your annual fast is over,
You suddenly thought of me over breakfast
And wished that I was pouring out the coffee,
Passing the toast,
Dipping my spoon into your loganberry jam,
In fact, this pain that has been pounding through
                                                        my brain
Every evening, slightly after eleven,
Reminds me of the headaches that you plagued
                                                          me with
Purely with the power of a thought
Whenever I upset you in the past.

It is now eleven years since I last saw you
On a crowded street in August, just off the main
                                                   drag in Brighton,
The leaves already falling.
You were walking with our daughter up the hill,
Your face almost smothered in a scarf,
Your eyes cast down as you watched your shoes
Tapping out a death march on the pavement.

No, you were not angry as I stood and watched
                                                            you there,
Just aware of a jostling crowd of strangers
Rushing down the hill to find a bar:
And also, unbeknown to me just then,
You were lost in grief for your loved
                                                      grandmother
Who had passed away just the week before.
The grief that you were living through that day
Was far too deep for even me to share.

Yes, we two are very private individuals
Wrapped tightly up in our little worlds
As hermits hide their heads in swathes of cloth.
But at night I sometimes dream you have returned
And are fighting with me for some space in bed.


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

(1) Anticipation.(2) Legend. (3) My Honest Roughcast Heroes. (New Version).

                 1.

        Anticipation.


Through the fence a flash of starlight,
The sun reflected off your watch
As you walk towards my house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 5th. 2016.
-----------------------------------------------

                 2.


            Legend.


Mount Errigal, a hump backed whale
Beached upon a northern shore
Slowly        melting        into        sky.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 3rd. - July 5th. 2016.
---------------------------------------------------

                    3.

My Honest Roughcast Heroes.


I notice in these photographs a preponderance of shaggy beards,
Perhaps now obligatory for serious poets,
Those cantankerous prophets unsure of man or God
Who roar outrageous jibes at the deaf and dumb,
Or innocuous folk who warily walk on by.

They like to warn non stop, a la Wilfred Owen,
Bemoaning every catastrophe, small or large,
That goes skidding down the byways they drive on
At any given moment, noon or night,
And puts their guru noses out of joint.
But because their audience tends to be peripheral,
Computer jerks, professors, and the like,
They do not seem to haunt the dreams of many,
That is, until a bard is needed quickly
To churn out in the papers, on the telly,
Sentiments designed to edify the throng
In portentous verses, loud and long and empty.
But because their usefulness is superficial,
These Minotaurs of the verb, the studied phrase,
Soon saunter back to being unsung heroes,
The old time oracles of the hi tec world.

But I, not being of a rhetorical disposition,
Light candles for Robert Graves and Sylvia Plath,
Both vertigo sufferers on the crags of love,
And victims of a world spun into chaos.
They learned from diligent practice of their art
That personal poems would always hit the mark,
Expose the whole damn show with one one smart saying,
The raw tip of the poem, an arrow head,
Refined to slice untruth and waffle dead.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 July 7th. - 9th. - 12th. - August 8th. 2016.
  

Freedom Riders.

Two young people riding piebald ponies
Bareback across the summer fields
Seeking the illusion of perfect freedom
As they guide the ponies into the wind.

The father of the young girl wears a knife
Discreetly tucked into his belt,
A knife to scratch the young lads throat
To force him to make the girl a bride.

But the young folk prefered the heft of the wind
Hard in their faces and threshing their hair
To a lifelong fidelity to a marriage bed
And ten fractious children bawling down stairs.

Secretly at night they would snuggle together
Stunned by the stars glistening in their eyes,
 And they whispered "forever and forever,
We shall live how we love to, not how brute force decides".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 4th. 2016.

This poem developed out of the poem My Country that I wrote and blogged yesterday. This new poem refers to incidents that took place when I was 18, way back in the more innocent 1960`s. My Country is a direct response to the condition of the UK in the summer of 2016.

My Country.

I once lived in a real country,
A country that I traversed and loved.
But now my beautiful country
Has been changed, changed utterly,
Into a replica, a cut price imitation
Of something that my country never was.

A nowhere land, a Hollywood dream factory,
A Film Set mock up of my former home
That sags and falls to pieces in the rain,
Leaving only flotsam down the drain. -
A nightmare land, a cinematic fantasy
Where I am loathed because I love a gypsy.

And because my love is dark, I am told to pack off home,
But where is the open door to my reality?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 3rd. - 4th. 2016.