Tussy. .

Tussy was not buried,
Not swaddled by black earth
Evolving into hillocks and
                        dark hollows
Gradually, season by season
As the Elms fell and rotted,
New saplings were planted,
The moss sprayed out of existence,
And flowers broke through
                 the paving stones
Like little cries for help.


Tussy was not buried.
Her urn remained on view
Upon a Library shelf
For fifty years, or more.
A fading blood red ribbon
Tied around the pedestal.

Tussy was not buried.-
Dark in its box of glass,
Its tomb of crystal,
Her urn stood, a polished trophy
Among the books and posters,
To be stared at by strangers.

Stared at by a little child
Who did not know who Tussy was,
Who did not understand that death
Is absolute and final.
A child who did not understand
That hope and joy can turn to ash.


I so wanted to break through the glass,
Place the urn close to my heart.
Hold it tightly like a baby,
A new life traumatized by birth.

I so wanted to break through the glass,
Talk to the woman that I imagined
Slept in her urn of ancient wood
Like an infant in a cradle.


But more than time and death now come
                                        between us,
More than the gathered thoughts of half a
                                              century;
Themes that have filtered through my ageing
                                                 brain
Like driftwood, or flecks of light and shadow
Dancing on the evening tide,
The ebb and flow of history.
Thoughts born in the decades after Tussy died
Invoking war and terror.


Now Tussy sleeps deep down in London clay,
Locked in the tomb of her illustrious father,
Karl Marx, economist and philosopher,
Her exuberant mohr with the mane of a lion.
A lifetime after a ruthless lie destroyed her
Tussy was buried with dignity and honour.

And today in Highgate I feel much closer to her
Than when a child in the quietness of the library,
Bored with the books I studied her polished urn
As though it contained mythologies, a sainted martyr
Whose vibrant voice had long ago been silenced,
Silenced by suicide, or perhaps a squalid murder.


Now as I falter on the brink of my dissolution,
A post holocaust cynic passed the age of seventy,
I realize that Tussy and I have much in common,
A belief in civil rights, true justice and equality,
A refusal to judge our neighbours by race or by religion.


Perhaps this wind twisting the leafless branches,
Soft whispering through the spring grasses,
The flowers that bloom in the cemetery
Between decaying grave stones,
Fashions a language that somehow can unite us,
The words of the dead and the living grafted together
To make one gentle music,
A miracle of the heath and of the woodlands,
The wildness that Tussy dearly loved.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 10th. - 14th. - 16th. - 30th.2017.
Extensively re-written April 20th. - 21st. - 23rd. 2018. - December 3rd. 2019

Tussy was the family pet name of Eleanor Marx, the youngest and favourite daughter of Karl Marx.