Age.

Now that I am more than 70
My life line is almost undone,
But old age should be a time of fecundity,
Not of dearth.

Cracked trunks held firm by steel supports
May yield their richest harvests
The closer they lean to the turf.

Spring blossoms adorning gnarled boughs
Open wide, like a prisoner`s eyes
To filch a glimmer of light,

A glimpse of the morning sun.
But too soon, frail petals descending,
Transformed into rust coloured tears
That dissolve in the cold dank earth,

Where all that begins must vanish,
All that ends be brought to new birth.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
April 27th. 28th. 2014. - October 30th. 31st. 2018.

(1) These We Cannot Know. (2) Rose hips.

My sperm frozen - graded and stored -
Perhaps - in a hundred years or more -
I shall father IVF children

A new family that may from time to time
Imagine my voice explaining to them
A history almost completely forgotten

A history sketched in dusty folders
Intelligible only to specialist scholars
Who can decipher a lost dialect

A parochial language - long out of fashion
Because all that we love has faded to dust
Like carnations pressed in a wedding album

A plush book packed with faded pictures
Even the widow can no longer decipher
Or bring back to life in her imagination.

We are all the children of hope filled dreams
That vanish like frost in the morning light.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 27th. - 28th. 2018.

                     *

              Rose hips.

After the first frost
The rose hips are
Delicious


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th.2018.

Japan.(Revised).

I did not know Mount Fuji was so large.
The artist has certainly come up with a powerful image,
Part real - part picture postcard.
Sailing boats - four or five deft pen strokes -
Float in a pale blue bay.
A purple scarf of cloud surrounds the mountain top.
Sometimes I press my ears close to the paper,
But as yet I`ve never heard the temple bells.

This dream of Edo was painted years before
American gunships appeared one misty morning
To blackmail the Shogunate into modern times.
This is the dream not shown in the faded images
Arranged, with awkward skill, not careful art,
By a young marine back in the eighteen eighties,
During a courtesy visit by the British Navy.
He prefered the box and lens to crafted woodcuts,
The truth was best preserved in black and white.

The glass plates have long ago been broken.
The photos in my great grandfathers album
Show an old world splintering at the edges,
Falling apart under the weight of progress.
No voices are extant, only these silent pictures
Of scenes so still they could have been invented
But remain authentic to the clash of cultures. -

The sun has set over distant Fuji.
A strip of Prussian Blue depicts the sky.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 4th. - 6th. 2017. - October 23rd. - 24th. - December 3rd. 2018.
October 27th. - 28th. 2019.

The Girl with Smoke Blue Eyes. (In the countryside near Kehl am Rhein).

It is the voices of bees I dream every night
While I think of my old home by the Rhine.
The voices of bees in the drowsy air
Accompanying our walk along the dyke
That in places is higher than the neat farm houses,
The silvery windows of Lutheran churches.

It is the voices of bees in the dank chill wood
Where we kissed in secret among the echoes
Of ancient gods and arrogant Nazis,
Of cannibal witches and inconceivable wars.
We kissed in secret, out of sight of the paths
Crowded with chattering Sunday hikers.

The bitter sweet taste of rye bread and honey
Stung my tongue as your lips touched mine.
Your smoke blue eyes were full of questions
I could not answer, even though I tried.
An invisible sword marked a barrier between us
As though between sleeping knight and maiden.

But this sword was our dread of the cruelties of time
Not a faded shadow of myth and legend.
We knew that I soon had to pack my suitcase
And take the train and boat to England.
My fellow islanders had turned their backs on Europe
And so I could no longer hope or remain,

Remain with my girl with the smoke blue eyes
Who walked with me quietly by the wide river
Watching the wild swans guiding their cygnets
Between the miniature offshore islets;
Walked with me quietly upon the tall dyke
Entranced by the voices of wild woodland bees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 21st. 2018. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: September 1st. 2018. (Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: September 1st. 2018. (Completed Poem).:                   1 . Scholars drawing arbitrary graphs Have decreed the onset of autumn Although the autumnal equinox Is more than thr...

Trevor J Potter's Art: October Poem.

Trevor J Potter's Art: October Poem.: When did I meet you first? Where did we first speak? In Germany or on St. Stephen`s Green? By the Liffey or by the Rhine? I just can`t r...

The Archivist. - After Watching Hamlet (Completed Version).

Searching through the rubble of my life,
The Broken relationships,
The ditched ideals,
I find the charred remnants of a persona
A painted image on a flimsy rag
Long since thrown out on the tip,
The municipal nest of flies.

So this is a portrait of who I thought I was
When trying to make a mark in my local streets,
Impress the girls,
Cadge a kiss or a drink.
I was not the wise guy I made out to be,
Everything I said was an affectation,
A frayed quilt of other peoples words,

A frayed quilt to hide my terrors under
While displaying a lack of purpose at every turn,
A somnambulant clown
With nothing much to say
And scared of being laughed at,
Regarded as a small time proto-Yorick
When Hamlets guile had always been my guide.
But this, my friends, is only half the story,
I find a faded photo in a drawer,
A document I had not seen for years.

There are areas of my life I rarely look at,
But the photographer here caught me unawares
When the masks were down
And the quilt left in the locker.
I was twenty three, my first love killed by cancer,
The only girl I never told a lie to,
And the panic in my eyes was clear to see,
The panic of an infant left alone,

Lost in the haunted dark without a candle
And with no one in the house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. - 14th. - 15th. 2018.

Ghost Sonata. (Revised).

I must translate you into music,
Your smile, your laugh, your tears,
The soft curves of your body
Like undulating melodies
Written on the dawn wind
As you move from window to window
Peering into the silent house
To see if I am there.

I must transmute you into harmony,
The gold of Brahms or Schumann,
The music of the spheres
That the alchemists could never find
When seeking transformations,
Or concocting strange effusions
Of herbs, water and stones,
Magic leavening the art of science.
I must sift your face from the wind
That scuffs the autumn clouds,

Blows all things to nothing,
Transfigures all that was once real
Into the flickering lights of memory,
Visuals slowly faltering into imagination.-
I must shape your portrait into song,
Enliven the curved lines of the pastel image
With the muted heartbeats of delicate rhythms
That I can sense deep in my mind,

Sense in my mind when I look at your portrait
That I drew last time that you were here,
A stranger peering in at my window,
Yet leaving no trace when I opened the door.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 8th. - 9th. 2018.

Mistranslations. (Completed Poem).

Through a glass darkly
Implies so much more than
In a mirror dimly, or
See but a poor reflection.

I study raindrops falling
On the surface of clear water
When the wintry light is dancing
A galaxy of patterns
Crystal clear and brilliant,
Delicate miniature rainbows
That vanish without trace
Once the showers have passed
And dusk paints out the sun.

The sleeping face of my true lover
Seems transfigured every morning
By intermittent sunlight
Filtered through the bedroom curtains
As though through the tears of Ondine
When she sank back through the waves.
Deep shadows shaped by dreaming
Ripple underneath her eyelids
Dark streams I cannot fathom.

Although we love each other
We only know what we can see
Through a glass darkly
Or like shadows in a mirror.
I pull the curtains open.
My breathe fogs the gleaming window.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 23rd. - October 4th. - 5th. 2018.

The three translations of 1 Corinthians 13 come from (a) The King James Authorised Version, (b) The New Revised Standard Version and, (c) The New International Version. Three translations from the New Testament Greek of St. Paul, all different in tone and therefore, subtleties of meaning differ quite radically from one English Bible text to the next.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Loss in November.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Loss in November.:               1. White sunlight slanting Through cracks in the door Late roses in bloom Blind The old men shuffle On sticks and sto...