Boston Lincolnshire May 1999.

The wild storm pours through space like a poultice
Curing the raw land with a coolness
That eases the shrivelled crops back into life
And awakens the dormant currents of the gnarled
                                     streams.
The trees reach up like hands grasping for rain,
(Desert hands beating back the sun burning dusty
                                     faces),
And the shrill cry of birds filters through the wind
As they shield their young with their wings.

Closeted in calmness, the congregation shelters in
                                     the church
Under the eye of the storm. Outside the sudden squalls
Twist the face of the Haven into a fierce torment
Of anguished grimness, a tidal fury of salt and foam.

Constructed before faith was questioned, the Gothic
                                        tower
Sways imperceptibly upon its deep foundations
Like a stunted sermon, a petition lopped, unfinished,
A Jesse tree with all the branches severed.
St Botolph formed this place, preaching upon a rock
Desert parables transferred to fertile Lincolnshire
Where houses built on sand are rare and strange;
And windmills, turning like prayer wheels, protect
                                  the fens.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 28th. - June 15th. 1999.
 

Three Love Poems,(1) A New York Encounter Revisited - (2) A Surreal Night.- (3) Bedtime.

               1.

A New York Encounter Revisited


She crouched down low
Leaning into the steam
On careful feet.

Laughing out loud
As I helped to undress her
She would talk of  nude bathing
In Icelandic springs
At the onset of winter.
Or was it mid summer eve?

This wild acolyte,
(The Eve to my liking),
Of pagan folk custom
And guiltless free love
Now hiding her breasts
Beneath soap suds and towels.

She whispers my name
Like a little girl lost,

A child of the back streets
Who lives for the night,

A runaway stranger
In search of a home.

Kneeling beside her
I rinse her long hair
With tremulous fingers,
Eyes studying the floor.
A service extended
While she acts up the priestess,
The transcriber of runes.

Our eyes never meet,
The taboo is absolute
The forfeit most certain,
A week of not talking or touching or smiling
However close up
We sit down together,
However often we stroll to the station,
However often we sleep side by side.

This is the life we have chosen together
It is just the way that we like it.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
25th. - 27th. February, 5th.- 7th. March 2013.

        ------------------

                2.

 A Surreal Night. 


Come sleep by me
 And let us be
Contented for an hour or so

The rain
Sneaks down the window pane
The storm beats down
Upon the town
The devils mask is shed

But soon
Drowned moon
drowned thoughts
In tune
With cellos
Played in Unison
In secret rooms above the bed

The devil has the strangest tunes
The devil plays contra-bassoons

These moonless nights
In dreams we dread
The clumping of the devils foot
Across the hollow ceiling
Led

The devil takes the lonely soul
Stokes it with lead
Then gulps it whole
The devil is as black as coal

Together we are safe and warm
Together we are freed from harm

Come sleep by me
And let us be
Contented for an hour or so

But if you snore
I will make you sleep next door


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 26th. 1963. - February 18th. 2013. 

            ----------------------

                        3. 

                 Bedtime. 

Tonight we sample simplicity

Two people

                     One bed

Your nightdress strewn on the pillow

My underpants dropped on the floor

The icon

               Face turned to the window

A guilty secret

               A blocked charm



Lonesome in their magic world
The trees outside are praying

Wild roses whisper together
The pampas grass is sighing



Your hands reach out towards me

Our fingers interact
                  Like Fireflies dancing

Dragonflies darting over streams

The water sings under their wings



Storm clouds shade a distant shore
The darkness pierced by lightning



Our cat
Asleep on the eiderdown

Enjoys the rocking of waves


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
March 9th.- 10th. 2013.

The Spoiled Brat and the Showgirl. (A Surreal Satire).

I will bang you up in a tiny gold cage
Hung down low from my penthouse ceiling
On a slowly revolving armature.-
I will make a study of your moods and
                                        expressions,
Your daily paint job and changes of hair,
Every Nick n Tuck and disguised laugh line.
I will record all this on my mini Laptop
With an immaculate eye for precision,
That is as near as damn it, perfection.
         & All this I shall do
         As you look out at me
         Or        away from me,
But your freedom cannot be an option.

And then, when I lunch in, I will feed you
On coconuts          cherries         cheese
Apricots             pineapples           pears
Chocolates     cranberries     mushy peas
              If you want it so,
Not feed you at all
                              If you want it so,
Or shoot you dead
                              If you want it so,
Which, according to your Centre Fold sister
Is better than being starved to a whisker,
However,
      To return to the gist of this poem,
      I being ever your obliging keeper
      Must surely defer to your pleasure,
But your freedom cannot be an option.

And then, when it is time for bed,
I will sometimes let you wander
Thru the rooms of my sky high mansion
That I purchased the hour we were wed;
But,
If you try to launch out from the balcony,
      My Bird Catcher Net is set ready
      To swoop down over your head.
I have purchased all this to impress you,
But if you want to get out you`ll be sorry,
      Freedom cannot be an option,
Not for love, nor for yacht loads of money,
Not for you,                   Not for anyone!

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 20th. 1964. - February 20th. -  22nd. 2013.

February 1963 Re - Visited.

                             1.

That was the year we walked on the Serpentine,
A thousand bells ringing under our feet
In the secretive kingdom of ice.
That was the winter when everything changed
Into something strange, beyond myth and folklore,
Not catalogued in forensic Libraries.
Prized volumes turned brittle in frozen fingers
Like slivers of glass crazed by the cold;
Sharp voiced poems, compelling as icicles,
Melted in pockets;
Novels, transfigured upon the wind
Into luminous flakes of fragile snow,
Dissolved without trace.
And wherever we walked, invisible bells
Delicately, icily ringing.

                            2 .

Alone, panicked, afraid in this northerly wilderness
Of bitter promises and upturned dreams,
Unaware that her poems would soon become famous,
A lost girl dying, unobserved in her kitchen,
Her babies asleep next door.

                            3.

A stubborn wind cutting out of the north lands,
Grey sleet swirling,
Riccocheting into the desiccated foliage
Of cauterized trees.
London, city of chaos and smokestacks,
Retreating behind a wintry curtain
Of secrecy and tears.
Urban foxes, crying out in the white streets
Like Silesian Werewolves,
Prising open our most sinister fears.

                            4.

At dawn I imagined the reappearance of Spring,
A sudden cloudburst of fraudulent snowdrops
Spilling fragrance over these desolate spaces;
The wind shut down to an impotent whisper,
The foxes at ease in their dens.

                            5.

But tonight, alone in her cold, rented kitchen,
The panicked young woman can no longer retrieve
Recollections of sunlight glistening on daffodils,
The wild, mindless swarming of new hatched bees,
But stares far into a cocoon of darkness
That she dreams as safe as a perfect childhood,
The consolation of home. A kiss from her mother
At the edge of the night.

Outside, voiced under the thrall of a lost world,
Ice bells delicately, eerily ringing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 9th. - 14th. - 17th. March 16th. 2013.

Hope on the Verge of Winter, 1969.(Revised).

        
Through a glass darkly I perceive her
Caught in the prism of former times,
North London Girl
Pale as the Arctic ice floes,
                                         Green eyed,
Nordic,
            Allergic to the bright morning sunlight
Dissecting grey mountaintops of cloud
           & yet,
Almost in love with the Autumn rains
Threshing and sluicing her unkempt hair
Into black rivulets.
She walks in a trance, head down, eyes askance,
Gloved hands pushed deep into over stuffed pockets,
Cigarette unlit,
Bag under armpit,
As feline like she deftly navigates
The dank old alleyways that intersect
Derelict Victorian terraces.



Through a glass darkly I recall her
Half dreaming, half believing those small drear rooms,
Demented sanctuaries, that stunk So disarmingly of dud moth
balls, beer, Wine, socks, boots, incense sticks, hash, green tea,strong
black coffee, Air Freshener, burnt bacon, sex. Bedsits cold as Colditz
Where,
            hunkered down by the small gas fire and wrapped in a rug
Naked
We squatted in a battle zone of old army blankets, cushions, grey pillows,
pants, bras, cosmetics, old books, comics, Presbyterian tracts.
Two kids in cahoots,
Volatile adolescents, smoochyly dragging on Sobranie cigarettes,
(So illicit....So divine), 
To experiment with refinement, (So divine....So exquisite),
fake dignitas, real culture, elementary style; & then half dismissing
or, tired out half listening
                to broadcast takes on Shakespeare, G & S, O F Wilde,
(So boring....So THE Beeb....So Grandma Moses....So effette )
Or our pile of worn out 45s spun weirdly out of sinc
                                           On a madly warped turntable.



But then in secret                               at my parents house
Some quiet weekends                       I would rinse her hair  
As she crouched down low              in the old stepped bath
Covering her breasts                        with tremulous fingers.



Through a glass darkly I remember
A cool chick with the Beatles
Squatting in a studio
Tambourine in hand             singing.
What a shame                      Mary Jane had a pain at the party.
And some other songs I cannot now remember.

North London girl
Pale as the Arctic ice floes;
                                         Green eyed
Allergic to the white morning sunlight
Dissecting grey mountaintops of cloud.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
6th. December 2003 - 22nd. - February 2013. - 25th. February 2014.
May 20th. 2020.

Schooled by Cinema.

                      1

You teach us with machines
Wars imagery,
Projecting through dark halls transparent dead,
Their days of terror refined
To a grey grain.
Blood, black spots on flat figures
Sprawled across backgrounds
Of merged perspectives.

We accept
Presentable profiles turned
From the sun the camera used,
Young fingers trapped in grey sand
As shells bang black and white.

These are the facts we glean
As we relax in the big black box you provided
Consuming our popcorn
With enthusiasm.

Eyes bright with concentration
We sample the gory details.

                    2.

Taught by Machines  MACHINES  MACHINES 
We study these victims falling
To deaths long since experienced;
Jaws loose, arms extended
signalling defeat.

We thrill to their defeat.

Their young flesh burned and furrowed;
Their clear eyes glazed, then shuttered;
Their fine wits drilled and hollowed
By precision made machines.

These celluloid soldiers embrace
A vacuum of fallacies.

                   3.

Dear teachers, what`s the point?
Why wont you tell?
Lacking the scope for contention
You spew out
Facts  FACTS  FACTS 
That are only abstractly defined,

Blind logic to hoodwink the mind?

Grey truths that can`t be refined?

Confined by concentration, then
Conforming to subtle images
Our vision narrows sharply.

                  4.

Do you extol a mans brilliance in battle
Or here condemn the banalities of war?

Do these grey documents contain
An insight into our future?

Is life just a limbo of images?
Dare we look beyond the images?

Are we merely the slaves to our future?
Blind shadows adrift in the night?

Our fears being real,
Our culture, a balance of mysteries,
Will we be thus exposed to grey oblivion
When our sun grows colder,
Outshone by brighter light?

Dear teachers, where is truth?
Why wont you tell?

You do not reply.

You are busy projecting the films.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 18th. 1966. - April 21st. 2008. 
5th. poem in series of Poems in Times of War. 

Although this was the first poem in this series to be composed, 
it completes the cycle which should be read as a single work in
five sections. 

Babes in Arms. The Dark Legacies of Total War. (Revised).

                         1.

Seven little words
repeated with an understated reverence.

Shoah 
Porajmos 
Holocaust 

                 Dachau 
                 Buchenwald 
                 Auschwitz 

Birkenau 

Black smoke swirling
Snake like into the sky

Schutzstaffel        SS       

Words whispered in darkness,
A canticle of death:
The hiss of the snake
Entering a darkened room,
All the windows blackened,
The shutters barred at night
With interlaced barbed wire.

Live snakes interlocked on broken glass; 
A parable of loss,
Despair beyond reason.  


                          2.

& Now,
              in another country,
At another time,
This nightmare of war, a popular TV fiction,
Revised, fleshed out, worked over,
Put on to bolster the schedules: -

                                                    & here,
Right through the night
& Safe at home, I stare into the eyes of long dead soldiers.
They parade, tall pallid Titans, through silent streets
& burnt out city centres, knives in belts, machine guns at the ready: -

Scuffed images captured by the newsreel cameras
Flashed up onto my plasma TV screen
To the sound of martial music.

Gaunt families crawling out of derelict houses,
Into a desert that was once their city.

Sad babies clutched to breasts now cold as winter;
Their fingers curled up tight like withered branches.

Old men waiting in line among the ruins
For a short truck ride to an unknown destination.

Press footage shot with an eye to the morning headlines.
Press footage shot without much love or pity.

The grainy newsreel cuts to another scene;
Soldiers handing sweets to starving children
Under a dark architrave of guns.

                             Filmed from above
At a discreetly fastidious angle,  The
results resembled a stylised Hollywood
Show; An awkward monochrome ballet
Conceived, at a moments notice, Without
much trouble, by a senior film technician.

                             3.

The soldiers dance like cobras in the sun,
Playing so deftly with the hungry children
That the children fear to move, scared to
                                                  sacrifice
One second of this deadly magic show,
                                                 this bleak
charade, and return to their shelters in the
                                                 rubble,
Their makeshift tents of stone.

The soldiers mime sweet arabesques of love,
Sprawled in the ooze,   the carcass of a dove.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
January 30th. - February 5th. - 9th.- March 2nd. - 4th.  2013.
11th. September 2013. Revised February 11th. 2016.

4th. poem in sequence of Poems in Times of War.

I think this poem has relevance in respect of events taking place in Europe in 2015 - 2016. 


(A footnote to Babes In Arms).

                  1971.

The soldiers clown the arabesques of love,
Sprawled in the ooze, the carcass of a dove.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
January 26th. 1972.