Two Poems. (1) Sufi Love Poem.(2) A self Portrait.

                 1.

     Sufi Love Poem.


Your love is the only love
That heals me.
What was not is annihilated.
What always was      abides.


Only with you am I healed,
Contented.
Only with you am I truly
Alive.
Lonely nights are ruled by chaos.
Loving nights   are calm and still.
What was not is annihilated.
What always was      abides.


In your beginning
                                   I was with you.
In my beginning
                              you were with me.
When lost to you
My voice is crippled;
When bound to you
We transcend music.
What was not is annihilated.
What always was      abides.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 28th. 2017.

The lines printed in italics are an adaptation of an old Sufi saying.
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                 2.

      A Self Portrait.


I belong to three cultures,
English - Russian - Romany,
They wage an internecine war
Deep in my personality
As I struggle to differentiate
Between public and private morality,
Between what is good and what is bad,
What is sane and what is mad,
Between what is true and what is false,
Between mesmerism and reality.
And yet I could never be complete
Without this warfare deep inside
That swamps and holes long held ideals,
Then sails them home against the tide.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 3rd. 2017. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1). Selected Poems of Yevtushenko, First Edition....

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1). Selected Poems of Yevtushenko, First Edition....:                       1 Selected Poems of Yevtushenko. This book smells of decay, The pages are yellow, The covers have ceased to be ...

(1). Selected Poems of Yevtushenko, First Edition. (2). Stage Prop.(Revised).

                     1

Selected Poems of Yevtushenko.


This book smells of decay,
The pages are yellow,
The covers have ceased to be white.

The boy who bought this book
Is now aged seventy three,
Deep in the fall of the years.

For the book this is unimportant.
The book has its own agenda.
The book can understand nothing.

The book cannot read the words
That dance across its pages,
The book is a parcel of shadows.

The book only fills with light
When the pages are slowly turned
In the hands of a careful reader.

Unread it is merely a package
Of symbols that maybe important.

When the book is closed up tight
It ceases to have a meaning
Beyond its outward appearance.



The man has loved this book
For more than fifty years.

Sometimes it is a talking point.
Sometimes it is neglected.

It has rested on his bookshelf
Through all the changing seasons,

From the first snowdrop of springtime
To the final yellow leaf.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 10th. - 11th. - 13th. 2017.
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                     2.

             Stage Prop.


Left over from Pericles
A piece of chamois leather,
Something to clean old
                    windows with,
Rub out distortions,
Bring the long view into
                                  focus.
Even when every hope is lost,
Sunk deep into the ocean,
Despair is not an option.

One day an old song whistled
In a city full of strangers
Will remind us of lost friends
And tell us who we are.
A song from yesterday
Rehaping our tomorrows.

This stage prop, long put by,
Is just a cloth to wipe the windows,
To clean off dust and soot.
But as I study it for flaws
I recall the smiles and tears
From a season half forgotten:
The smiles of actors playing Shakespeare;
The tears of their farewells.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 27th. 2017.

My House.

My house is part of my mind.
The gadgets that pack my house
are facets of my intellect,
keys to who I am.
Likewise my books,
my collages and paintings,
my piano and my harp.

The porcelain bowls,
the plastic cups,
the chairs, the tables,
are telling tales about me
that only strangers hear,
I am deaf to what they say
because they are my friends,
my cheek by jowl companions
throughout each night and day.

Strangers wander in and out,
check the boiler, change a tap,
repair the garage awning,
mop the floor,
 yet they see what I don`t see,
a world in perfect miniature,
my sacred dreams laid bare,

The personal is deeply sacred,
something we forget,
or turn away from at our peril.
When you walk into my house,
you break into my dreams,
breach my imagination,
become part of who I am.
A trace of you will stick
even though the memories falter.

Knock on the door and enter,
but please leave your shoes upon the step.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 22nd. - 23rd. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Kind of Epiphany. (Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: A Kind of Epiphany. (Revised): Between the tarmac and God Nestles the herb garden, A place to rest your feet, A place to rest your mind. Secularism is a bald faced l...

A Kind of Epiphany. (Revised)

Between the tarmac and God
Nestles the herb garden,
A place to rest your feet,
A place to rest your mind.

Secularism is a bald faced lie,
Everything in the world is holy,
Every tree grown straight or crooked,
Every child lost in play.

I touch the wall of the old cathedral,
Even the grey stones seem alive,
They thrum with the lives of the men that carved them,
Not with the traffic roaring outside.

I have gone back to reading Cranmer`s Prayer Book,
Ancient words have the power to heal
Wounds cut deep by misapplied science
Into the skulls of ancient beliefs.

Secularism has lobotomised true history,
The history of workmen, not ruled by clocks,
In thrall to the church bells chiming the seasons,
The dance of the stars on wintry nights.

Enclosed by tarmac and the sculpted Word
I sit alone and write this poem,
Thoughts balanced between the roar of the traffic
And the silent prayers of the distant saints.

Silence perhaps is more powerful than thunder.
Silence perhaps cuts deeper than words.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 21st. 2017. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Wrong Picture. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Wrong Picture. (Revised).: The girl in this photograph, so like an old girl friend but, not her. The street in the wrong country. The sky too pale a blue.- Wind...

(1) Easter Maple.- revised. (2) The Ides of March.

                     1.

            Easter Maple.


This tree, the council workers left for dead
last autumn, when the pavements and the roads
of my local suburb were littered with the
sad farewells
            inevitable at the close of such a summer.


But now this tree, earmarked for the electric saw
heard annually in these streets in early spring,
especially after a violent storm has lifted
tiles and chimney pots, and smashed them down
                                                                  like toys
chucked out of doors by intolerant children.
This tree,
this small dead tree,
                                 this recollection of our first home,
Eden,
           (after the Fall when all the plants had died
and winter had become the only season),
is now embossed with miniature ripening buds
sticky to the touch and succulent with newness.


It is perhaps almost certain that this maple
has won outright its claim to flourish here
in the tiny square of earth, allocated by the
                                                          council,
outside my front room window.
And perhaps one future summer, sweltering like
                                                              last year,
 its full grown boughs will shelter the heads of
                                                               strangers
walking where I walked, a decade or two earlier,
concocting notes that morphed into this poem.


This tree, the council workers left for dead,
                                                      untended
may yet survive these elegant red brick houses
and grow up tall and straight and dark with power,
a restless power far older than mankind. -
I fold up my notebook and press it into my pocket.
The paving stones ring hollow under foot.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 15th. - 16th. - 22nd. 2017. 
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                     2.

     The Ides of March.


Surprised by a wan red moon
the whole neighbourhood out of doors
Waiting for something to happen.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 15th. - 16th. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Reckoning.(Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Reckoning.(Revised): And now the whole picture slides into focus slowly             just like a reflection in the water becoming meaningful to the dazzled ey...

The Reckoning.(Revised)

And now the whole picture slides into focus
slowly
            just like a reflection in the water
becoming meaningful to the dazzled eye
           as the waves subside into flatness,
and reeds stand upright like a line of soldiers.
                                                               

For a moment my whole life seems to flash
                                                     before me,
I am not dying, and yet I now must learn
to love simplicity, to clear the clutter from my
                                                                home,
to banish from my day arcane obsessions,
to make new every morning,
to love my neighbours more than love myself.
                                                           .

Self analyses is something that I have often
side stepped,
but for thirty years I have never truly loved,
I have only felt the wasp sting of desire,
and to admit this makes me grieve for those
                                                        I`ve hurt.
I have become a silent witness to my own life,
a hollow space, dug out and filled with echoes
by too many broken
                         lives.


But now someone is calling out to me to help her,
keening in the shadows of her sorrow,
                        imploring me to open up my heart.
And I must walk with her,
                                            confront her darkness,
walk with her and listen to her story,
                                          and learn to understand.


Tonight we sat together by the lakeside
and watched the pictures form, then break apart,
then form again once the breeze had settled.
"Are you really here with me?" She kept on
                                                            asking.
"Or are you just a shadow in the dark?"



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 21st. - 22nd. 2016.
March 9th. - 10th.- 11th. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Bethlehem Angel.(New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (New Version).: I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon when my name should have been up high in lights burning holes in the Broadway sky thro...

(1) The Wrong Picture. (Revised). (2) Chinese Seascape.

                    1

     The Wrong Picture. 


The girl in this photograph,
so like an old girl friend
but, not her.

The street in the wrong country.
The sky too pale a blue.-
Wind flower blue
too Nordic, too washed out.

I did not know that pain
could come back with such intensity,
could spike deep a second time.-

Joy,
a phoenix rising in the heart
on transient wings of flame.

The past,
a paradox of light and shade,
a place where hope seemed natural.

I drop the magazine in the bin.
There go my yesterdays.

                   

Seedlings planted out in May
always reached maturity,
our tiny plot of moss and flowers
out glitzed the tarmac gardens.

My nervous fingers slowly stretch
across the qwerty keyboard
searching for an answer.

Must I always fall in love
with faces that are similar,
live in a world of mirrors?

Hoping that this image
may reflect a better future
I return to the photograph.

I am thinking of a different street.
Poplars bending in the wind.
Kinder at play, parents dozing fitfully
on verandas dark with vines.

The girl in this photograph
would pass me on the side walk.
Her image in this magazine
has warped my sense of time.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 25th.- March 4th. - 17th. - 18th. 2017.
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                      2

        Chinese Seascape


Balsa islands in a black sea.
White swans drifting.
Even I forget the pace of time.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 18th. 2018.