Provencal Magic 1957, A Meditation in Six Poems. New Complete Version.

Poem No.1. In the Clarity of Daylight. 

"The boy has an eye"
 Picasso said,
Standing in the doorway
The prodigy at his elbow.

They stepped from the silent studio
Into the packed out house,
The kitchen exotically informal
Ecstatic with a kaleidoscope of languages.

"The boy has an eye"
 He repeated,
First in French        then in Catalan,
His leathery face snipped open
By the shard of a smile.

"But also an ear"
 He might have added with style
Provoking the usual surprise.

But then Picasso could be sharp as a needle
Extracting an unexpected melody
From a pristine groove,
A direct cut Master copy;

Mood music expressed in pure colour,

Pure line.
----------------------------------------

Poem No.2.The Mythologies of Night. 

In the shuffled card pack of daily life
Picasso knew his place
And rather liked the kudos.

An exuberant master of theatre
He devised a ballet of shadows
On the wall of his dining room.
With a flick of a wrist he turned on a single spotlight,
            The entertainment was ace.

Antique mythology underpinned the daring plot line,
A satellite spinning somewhere deep in space
Top lit the Minotaur`s doom.

              The spotlight clicked off,
              The audience sat still in the gloom.
A shuffle of paper puppets, Theseus being packed off to his bed
in an old brown box by the lampstand,
               A sarcophagus for the mysterious dead.

Out in the distant woods the awakening Cicadas caroused
The ascent of the solitary moon.
------------------------------------------------------

Poem No.3. Colour & Music, A Dance to the Vollard Suite. 

When I caress your body
Before we are truly awake
I can hear a concord of symphonies that affirm you
Sung in perfect unison.

Choristers unencumbered by any language
Greeting the clarity of morning sunlight
In water colour rainbows of music.

A visceral first light elemental chorus
In symbiotic balance with our morning love making.
The wild world flaunting its mayhem
Deep burrowed, haunting our feral dreaming.

The Minotaur, half awake in the undergrowth,
Counts out pale morning stars
Like funny money.
Small change that can never, in measured time, be brokered
Slowly melting like ghost pence, fading to nothing
In the Balearic dawn light.

Orpheus and Eurydice
Sing out their feral love songs
without restraint
Beneath the May Day blossom,
The delicately swaying boughs.
They barely notice the dark waves
Slowly eroding the shoreline
Of the bow shaped southern coast.
Death has yet to overcast their black Provencal eyes,
Or set the wild beasts yowling.

But when I settle down to sketch your portrait,
You sprawled across the bed, pale Aphrodite,
The shell shocked goddess of the wine dark sea;
The Minotaur, blear eyed, cartwheels like a drunkard,
Or the Sun crashed Icarus gripped in tourniquet wings;
Cartwheels roaring into my private apartments;
This half mad doppleganger with a grip of steel.
.
He grabs the palette and knife straight out of my fingers
And rushes headlong at the unfinished canvas
To complete my work, reveal himself the true Artist.
He cuts loose a primeval shriek of animal passion,
My raw imagination exposed in his muscular brush strokes
Dashed blindly against the weave:
I cannot resist the energy of his flaying.

He fights to delineate your features, my Aphrodite
Your inner song, on fire within the pigments,
Deep burning into a timeless, a visceral sound scape
A portrait in colour, extemporized like folk music
Compelled by an intractable rhythm,

The wild fire of our seeing,

The mad pain of our loving,


The staccato beat of our lives.

---------------------------------------------------

Poem No.4. The Artist and The Schoolboy.

The artist stared straight into my eyes
As I sat still in his studio
Vainly trying to magic up a safe disguise,
A hat to hide under.

"The truth shall set you free , my boy",
                                      he said
With a twinkle in his animal eyes
That sliced far down through me
Like diamonds cruel as ice.

Or perhaps, after a glass or two of the best
Shared with lovers, disciples, critics, friends
On a quiet, platinum beach
Reflecting the sun
Down by the vodka white sea,
Truth would be put to the test
And on occasion found to be wanting.
_______________________________

Poem No. 5. Feral Art. 

How to be an enigma
Is all that I have ever learned
from you
               Picasso.

Perhaps
An artist must always be set back
From the daily treadmill
That ensnares both poor and rich

In their efforts to remain alive,

Barely, but simply, alive.

Yet the artist has no other choice
But to stand alone, far back,
Tied down in the brittle scar tissue
Of the ins and outs of a life.

How else can we clearly observe
The variegated ways of the world
With a knife edged, untarnished eye,
Like a sleek cat hunting at night

Enigmatic,
A cat stone still on the roof
Intent on assassination
Before she slinks home, like a ghost,
To drop her small gift by the gate,

Her comment on everyday life,

A remark to be noted, proscribed?
___________________________

Poem No.6. The Epilogue? 

Perfection demands an enigma
A never to be answered question
The unlikely absence of flaws

The stillness of meditation
Transposed by a living hand
Into porcelain
                      Wood or stone

The sounds of Bach on the radio

Your portrait displayed by the door

Picasso up on the shelf

Perfection demands an enigma
The grace of the Venus de Milo
The eradication of Self


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
May 6th. - 17th. - 20th. - 21st. 2013. - August 8th. - 9th. 2013.
Provencal Magic 1957, is a single work comprising of six interconnected poems. 

(1) In Memoriam, Jane Avril. - (2) Oh Moira. .

                        1.
In Memoriam Jane Avril.

She died the year that I was born,
La Melinite.
Her last words, "I hate Hitler"
Scrawled on a scrap of paper
Thrown at the dark
as that hungry war time winter,
Cruel as a feral cat,
Ensnared her in its jet black paws.
Sweet Avril, imprisoned by loneliness,
Your Fin de Siecle mind slammed shut
On a room cold with strangers.
All that you had honoured, cherished, admired,
Those remnants of a culture rich in love,
The sparky joie de vivre of Parisian nights,
Hammered under the thud of fascist boots.

She had been the free fall spirit of the dance
Opened herself in fits to the magical fire of the gods
As she deftly glided, wildly kicked and whirled
On slim feet.
An insubstantial wraith that whirling spun
Quixotic tapestries of joy, of grief, of hope,
A chaos of desire,
                 despair,
                 defeat,
Dancing alone, and with eloquent finger tips
Etching filigree ghosts in the musty gas lit air.

And what of her friend,
That self mocking, eloquent aristocrat, with the insights of a surgeon
a stick full of booze
                               and a broken walk?
Yes, what of him, her long dead lover,
                               That laser eyed artist of the night
                               Who portrayed her in taut and candid close up
                                Raw with truth?
Where do his visions fit in this brutal world, this death camp Reich,
                                Her brave Henri,
                                Her co-conspirator,
                                The partner to her soul?
Where are his insights now?              Where the caustic laughter?
Condemned as degenerate art           By the purveyors of murderous lies.

Sweet Avril,
                   (Hitler soon died, despised.
                    His projects, utterly ruined.
                    His enemies honoured). 
Oh how I wish you had leaped high and free,
Way beyond those years of cruel entrapment
To dance just one time more, one joyous night of wild excess, of proud rebellion
                    In the liberated City of Lights.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 4th. - 6th. 2012. - May 4th. 9th. 2013.  June 8th. 2013.
For Jane Avril, Dancer, Actress, Artists Model, Singer,  1868 - 1943.  
We still do not look Lautrec straight in the face.          
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                           2.

Oh Moira. (A Soft Rock Number). 

Oh Moira, watch me dream of you,
I want to scheme to lean on you,
But how can I reach through to you?
You hide behind the old and new.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.

But how can I reach through to you
When the blinds are down, and so are you?
When your eyes are black, and your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, let me turn to you.
Oh Moira.

Now every night I dream of you,
And eat and sleep and love with you,
And touch and type and talk with you,
And write eccentric songs with you
That annotate the old and new,
But yet I cant reach through to you,
Your eyes are black, your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, watch me dream of you.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
February 7th. 1981. - May 21st. 1984.

Two Poems (1) The Streams of Lough Melvin.(2) Bad Weather Friends.

                    1.

The Streams of Lough Melvin.

The river contorts over stones
Reminding me, for no clear reason, of a knuckle thrust into my face
By a fretful infant
Urgently demanding my time, my total attention.

Being no geologist, here, at the rapids brink, this fraught re-enactment of Dis,
I stare, with an untutored interest,
Down into translucent layers of ancient time
To explore a ferocity of movement, a convulsion of currents, side swiped deflections
reflecting my fears, my suicidal deletes.
I stare, like a wild man, deep into the troubled waters,
The voice of some river god permeating my addled brain
With unclear warnings, garbled chants, an oblique reference to Charon.
The god of this untamed river let loose by the rain? Perhaps?
More likely a substrata reminder of my fragile mortality.

Thrashing flash floods envelope flat granite blocks
That, long before Noah took ship, were sheaved in thick skins of old limestone
That then seemed forever
But have long since been pounded to sludge.

My Grandchildren laugh at my stillness,
Contemplation is not to their liking,
It is monkish, old fashioned, outmoded,
It is not on their template of skills.
They pummel me out of the way of the restless water
Onto the new gravel causeway
That climbs to the town on the hill.
But the rapids still roaring behind me are pulling me back and back and back
To plummet an implacable darkness.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
29th. - 30th. April. May 1st. 2nd. 2013.  

Dedicated to the Late Peter Odell, died 27/04/2013 aged 56 years. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

                      2. 

    Bad Weather Friends. 


I am your threadbare overcoat
That you throw on over your shoulders
To keep yourself warm
On chilled out winter nights.

But I also feel the cold
When you hang me up in the wardrobe
And leave me there in the dark,
For week after unlived week,

Absorbing the odour of moth balls.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 4th. 2013. 

(1) Bright Dandelions. (2) Dandelion Removal.(3) Nuits Saint Georges and Josephine.

                               1.

                    Bright Dandelions. 

The beauty of these dandelions reminding me of you,
My wild flower,
My rider of the untamed ponies
Trekking summer fields
Fording rock strewn rivers.

Wide teenage eyes laughing,
Pantheistic, fierce in the pre dawn half light,
Pristine mirrors of the god.
Small hands grasping thrusting shoulders.
Yellow hair streaming.

Distorted by technology,
The lens coarse ground, unfocused,
You on your wild pony, white shirt torn open;
This Kodak printed image
Fades, nicotine stained by sunlight.

These days I now prefer to trust
The embroideries of my memory
However worn and ancient;

The finest patterns crafted with the threads of Sichuan silk
Lofted high on Pennine wind.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
16th. - 18th.- 22nd. April 2013. 

----------------------------------------------------. 

                              2.

                  Dandelion Removal.

I drag the Dandelion out of the narrow border
With trowel and fingers:
Tearing apart my chosen victim, my class A prisoner,
Into several ragged pieces.
Shreds of life that did not seem to matter
Thrown to the April wind.
With one quick move I serenely sacrifice
The unwanted ugly baby.

I become in my garden a sort of amateur Nazi
Trying to enforce strict order
With spade and sharp edged hoe.
Thrusting the heal of my green boot into the raw earth
I arrange the perfected, the vacuum packed species
Into long well mannered rows.
This is my chance to indulge in a little fanaticism,
To drill a small notch in the world.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
15th. April 2013. - 12th. September 2014. 

-------------------------------------------------------

                                 3.

Nuits Saint Georges and Josephine. 

I taste you in this wine,
The sweet and bitter fruits
Dissolving over my tongue
And slithering into my belly
To make me very drunk,
Like Nelson stuck in the Brandy.

The intoxication explains to me
With simple, Pub Time stories,
Why I have never felt properly sane
When left alone in your company
My Showgirl of the windswept horses.

I am completely enthralled by your face,
My python slung Eurydice,
My Gypsy with the raven black hair
And Big Top bare back grace,
Your unprincipled savoir - faire
That your friends think fine and funny,
Has led us to the brink of disgrace.

I fear you will saunter away
Like a Pop Stars doting baby
Caught up in the underworld heat
That snakes through the depths of our city.
I can see you in Wardour Street
Bereft of your favourite pony,
Earning your living in Bars
With the voice of a victimized angel,
And your delicate dancing feet.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
13th. April 2013. - 27th. June - 15th. August  2013.


.

Two Love Poems.(1) Wild Ponies.(Revised Version). - (2) Tomorrow Could be Different.

                          1.

                  Wild Ponies. (Revised Version).

Riding unbridled ponies across cold fields,
The wind scything through our loose hair,
We outsmart our fears laughing.

And afterwards, you on the damp grass,
Dress hitched high up over your shoulders
Exposing slim thighs, belly, breasts, all
White as the winter snowdrifts,
Boots kicked deep into the undergrowth
As though they were of no importance,
Although, when you snatched them off the
                                     shelf last week
They were your absolute pride and joy,
Your leap into sophistication,
Your commitment to a grander market;
But now, all caution shoved into the wind
                                     like scraps of lies,
We vandalize the rough insanities of love
With Shakespearean audacity,
The beast with two backs tupping in the grass;
Mud larking miscreants roughing up propriety. -
"And O My God How I Love the shear abundance
                                       of You!
Your hot salt flesh fierce against my mouth,
Feet kicking against my legs,
Young breasts already sour with drops of milk."

Flat on our backs we stare out at the stars
Shimmering in the frost haze, almost beyond sight,
Far above the filigree mask of trees.-
Snuggled up naked, warm in this wintry night,
Our shared thoughts soaring way beyond ourselves
Like apprentice astronauts, angels honed to flight,
Arcing across our universe in sheaves of fire
To force the heavens open with brand new light,
The force field of redemption.-
"Angels are jet propelled", you once proclaimed
Staring me straight in the eye, "Like Christ in the firmament".

We make our peace with the world, and also with
                                                            each other,-
"Those two are wild as the ponies that they ride",
Our next door neighbours whisper."But fiercer than the ponies".
"They will both come to a bad end, you mark my words".
"Just like his Dad?"                  "Just like her bitch of a mother."

The night is as thin as rice paper, we can hear every sound, every word
Murmured near or far. Two miscreants curled together, squeezed in a pod,
Dreaming of those delicate ponies              dancing through uncut grass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 21st. -22nd. - 27th. - September 2nd. - 3rd.  2013.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

                          2. 

    Tomorrow Could be Different.

You sit on the edge of the bed
Like a street kid hogging the pavement
Legs wide apart.

Meantime, I carry on with my daily chores,
Typing poems, cooking dinner, washing floors,
Confronting the newspaper.

Some mornings I make attempts at prayer,
But when I knock and look in on the mirror
I wonder what on earth I see in there.

Perhaps our world is full of heavenly angels,
But it seems my Hen, you are not one of them,
And I am merely something the cat dragged in.

But then at least we do have one another,
So when you finally decide to come downstairs,
We might as well lie low and have a cuddle.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
11th. - 12th. March 2013.

Two Poems, (1) Barn Owls. (2) On the Cusp of Spring and Winter.

                     1.

             Barn Owls.

The moment you left the house
I became like a stick thrown into the wind
With no place to fall.

A dead leaf dropped on the wet ground
Scuffed at by laughing children
Chasing after a ball.

A plastic cup dropped in the gutter
Slowly dismembered into shreds
Under which two waterlogged beetles
Skid and crawl.

But what of you, do we see you at all
Rushing back to your dying brother
Now collapsed in his freezing caravan
Like a foal curled up in a stall?

Do we see you crying at midnight
As he lies coughing under his window?
Now counting the pulse of his breath
While outside the Barn Owls call?

No, we are too busy scratching at sores,
At our jealousy and other trite sorrows
As we stare bleakly into the mirror.
We do not notice your kindness at all.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
April 4th. 2013. . 

-------------------------------------
                        2. 

On the Cusp of Spring and Winter. 

The dark forest cracks open its bare bones
To reveal the fledgling leaves.
The softened leaf mould breaks apart, bursts
And roughly heaves with fevered disruptions
Splitting open the secret heart of the forest.
Awakened saplings strive to muscle upwards
To greet a distant rumour of the sun.

The river stretches out a thickened fist,
A bruised fist towards the distant ocean.
Ice crashes down the mountainside in a torrent of rainbows
Dissolving ancient escarpments, water courses, unstable cliffs,
Mixed up with the wreck of woodlands, dead bracken, liquid
soil, the remnants of animals. Flesh wood and leaf mould
Thrown down to replenish the earth.

And we, the grieving citizens of the Earth,
Fierce children tamed by artificial means
Learned in the neon glamour of the streets,
The slick life of the city, the forum of plastic
dreams. We, the inheritors, cut off from ancient
hearths, our rural forbears, the comforts of
community. We, the suckling babes of Mother
Earth, Exiled in concrete citadels of light,
Gleaming charnel houses cloaked in steel and
glass / That vandalize the sky, block out the stars.
We too await the onslaught of the Spring
To galvanize with hope our lonely lives.

  Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

Sketched January 30th. 1991, Kehl am Rhein. - 
Revised London December 5th. 2003. - April 4th.- 5th. 2013.

Two Contrasting Poems, (1) Maundy Thursday Night. (2) The A Word.

                         1.

              Maundy Thursday Night

Pitch black
The Hand of God resting over us
Shadowing the interior of the church
With an intensity of sorrow
That average grief cannot touch.

The candles flicker in the fierce gloom
Like sparks of winter starlight
Refracted through sheets of melting ice.
I shiver in the darkness
Feeling intensely lost, alone,
Although the silent church is crowded.

Scarcely breathing
The sombre congregation kneels in prayer
Before the stripped altar, the vacated Shrine,
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed among fresh cut flowers,
And am struck by a searing pang of loss.

Today and yesterday and tomorrow
Come together in this single moment
That seems to exist outside linear time.
And for one short hour, opened wide to the eternal,
In another epoch in a much altered country, ,
Christ, who is for everyman, remains alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.

Traversing a distant rock filled valley
The traitor and guards are marching to claim him
For the whip, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns.
His ferocious cry of desolation,
Wild, like that of an injured animal,
Reverberates bleakly into our lives
Although we can barely imagine him.
A cry that could not anticipate
The enigma that is salvation.

Under the twisted olive boughs
Deaf to all prayer
His disciples remained locked in sleep
Like untroubled children.
We, in our blacked out London church
Commune with private thoughts and fears,
Feigning to believe that in our personal lives
We could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that dare not happen.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 29th. 30th.  2013. 
April 16th. 2014.,

-------------------------------------            
                          2               

                   The A Word

You were my first honest transgression,
My first encounter with the A word,
The noun that I was taught not to mention,
At home, and certainly not at school,
My first dive into the ancient Labyrinth,
(Buried deep under the prim Assembly Hall)
With its strange conundrums, spectres, animals
And a chance of being eaten by something
                                                     nasty,
Something that resembled a Human Bull,
A vast, mock tragic, monument to power
Inviting us to visit his Hall of Mirrors
Where nothing is certain, and legends overawe
Our grip on common things, on day to day reality.

I was nineteen, you were nearly thirty five,
A married woman, your family in the States,
Two young children awaiting your return,
An old house in the country to keep tidy,
A husband rather good with his old rifle
Not keen at all on a younger Cockney rival;
A herd of deer and a dozen hunting dogs;
A meadow land of butterflies and frogs.
You kissed my body as though it were an
                                                        icon
Something rare and precious, rich and rare,
A Chinese Vase perhaps? A pot of weekend
                                                        goodies
Far better than those skins flown back from
                                                        Africa,
Fresh hides of Antelope, of Lion, Cheetah,
                                                        Tiger
To keep alive your adventure under the sun
Inside the dark museum of your memory,
That Labyrinth of passion, madness, fun,
  That held me in its thrall, we had a Ball,
      But alas the tears were copious
    When all had been said and done.

I had always considered myself to be less than ordinary,
You changed my mind about that, and now I am grateful.
You trained me for survival, made me sit down and write,
But alas you were not so lucky, you could find no way to
                                                                           resist
The pull of your inner night, the call of your jet black star.
Hope extinguished
You rushed straight into the arms of the waiting Minotaur,
He tossed you into the air,                  you fell and broke.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
March 26th. - 28th. 2013.