Maundy Thursday Night, A Poem in Two Parts. (Revised Version).

                   1.

         The Waiting.

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;
The absolute emptiness that veils the eternal.
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed amongst 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.
Christ, who found good in every man,
Opened dead eyes with the power of compassion,
Now prays alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.

We kneel in the crowded dark of the chapel
Seeking to empathize with the heart broken Saviour
But finding no words that are adequate;
Our imaginations too tame to envisage such sorrow;
Our emotions confined to the world as we know it.

                        
                     2.

            The Arrest.

Traversing a distant rock strewn 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 this blacked out London church
Keep hidden our private fears and failings
Whilst trying to hope, beyond clear reason,
That we could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that surely, dare not happen?.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 29th. - 30th. 2013.
Re-written April 17th. - 19th. 2014. 

Easter 1966. (Original Version).

Girl
I remember the warmth of your love in a cold house;
The April wind rattling the sash windows;
The street dogs yelping.

We seldom linked our fingers, cuddled or kissed;
For hours we lay together writing songs,
Their words long since forgotten.

One night we made a wedding ring from knotted thread;
But the plaintive wail of passing trains
Told of unplanned journeys.

Girl
This poem is an intimate letter
Posted into the dark.

I hope you find it.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. - 12th. 2014.

Written on the forty eighth anniversary of the events recalled.

Two Poems. (1) A Love Remembered, Forty Years After. First Version. (2) October in The North. (For Emily Jane Bronte).

A Love Remembered, Forty Years After. (First Version).

(Rewritten Version, Published July 2015).        

                    1.

Girl
Slim as a Weeping Willow;
Hair unkempt, an ebony river
Flowing over frost white shoulders:
Eyes intense with sorrow.

How I miss the dance of your words,
The visceral rough edge of your laughter
Cutting me with the savage fierceness
Of unfettered animal emotions.

                     2.

Shortly after our child was born
You returned home to misty Ulster,
Retreating from the hubbub of London.
You mentioned only a short vacation,
But the evening that you boarded ship
A door slammed shut against the future
That we had carefully planned together,
Slammed shut with a raw finality.

                       3.

Girl
I now know that your parents thought us
Too young to wed and raise a family,
Too young to care and love.
                     
                       4.

One weekday, while your parents were out working,
You stayed at home and tried to cut your wrists.
With luck,your mother came back one hour early,
And somehow managed to save you.

All this I learned forty years too late
back home in London. A call on the telephone
from a complete stranger.

                        5.

These days I often visit Belfast City,
A troubled townscape packed with history;
The ghosts of shipyards;
Sectarian Peace Lines;
Armalites smuggled through the lough.
At dawn I have often been awoken
By a distant squabble of famished seagulls
Swarming over the oil black shallows:
The wail of a siren invoking legends:
The departure of ferries from the dock.

None of this now is foreign to me,
But sometimes when I walk alone
Through the modern day city centre
The past breaks through confining shadows
To stun me with a violent shock.
And as though you were trying to force me awake
At such times I have suddenly heard your voice
Clear as a bell, but strangely distant,
Keening softly              whispering sadly
Somewhere                 deep in the crowd.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - 7th. - 8th. - 9th. - 10th.  2014.
October 8th. 2014.
This poem is written as an organic growth, from seeding to final flowering. Hence the structure.

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October In The North. (For Emily Jane Bronte).


The clouds betwixt the sun and me
Increase my sense of fragility
My fear of winter haunts me

My shadow is swept from off the ground
In a flurry of Autumnal leaves
The fraught wind huffs and heaves

I bury my hands deep into my sleaves
And bow my head to the rain


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 1st. 2008.

Written with ironic affection.

Lost Girl.(Revised Version).

The last time that I saw you
Alcohol had taken it`s toll,
But the bright girl that I had once played with
Was still alive in you.

Your voice had been a sweet soprano,
The most beautiful in your Class;
But now you stuttered a garbled whisper,
And your hair had turned thin and grey.

Your teacher had warned of disaster
When she found you propping the Bar:
How I wish that time could flow backwards
To return us to who we were.

I have learned that you died and were buried
A year ago today;
I now sit alone in my back room
Recalling two children at play.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
4th. - 5th. April 2014.

Memory. (Revised).

When I opened the window this morning
I thought that I briefly saw you
Admiring the miniature roses.
But then, with a shock, I realized
That it is now more than twenty years
Since you last stood here in my garden,
Your hat tilted over grey eyes,
Your arm hooked loosely in mine.

Such memories are not pale ghosts,
They remind me of transfers printed
On derelict buildings
To remind us of what we have lost.
Nor are they sepia photographs
Stored in dusty albums
That are normally shut and locked.
But whenever I think of you
Memories lose their sepia strangeness
And become suffused with colour,
They are poignant, yet feisty with light.

When I opened the window this morning
I thought that I briefly saw you
Caught in a halo of sunlight.
You stood where you always had stood
When the roses were fully in bloom,
But I had no time to catch your attention,
No time to call out your name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 1st. - 3rd. - 4th. - May 26th. 2014.
June 4th. 2018. 

Short Erotic Poem.

I cannot remember your voice
But your body was special to me,
More valued than the family silver;
Your vagina sweet as a nut
Secreted away by a squirrel:
Your hair a tangled forest
That protected us while we slept.
You clasped my hand in the darkness
Because I was precious to you,
A gift to pack under the coverlet,
And not to write home about.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 29th. 2014.

(1). A Short Story.(Revised Version). (2). Hypatia of Alexandra.

                               1.

                      A Short Story. (Revised Version).


The woman could not afford to bury her child.
The woman did not know the whereabouts of her husband,
nor did she care.
The woman had only herself to rely on.
The child had died unexpectedly in her sleep.
The child was six months old.
The body was kept on ice by the Undertaker for several months.
The woman worked late to earn some extra money.
When the body began to putrefy the funeral took place.
The woman could not pay the bill in full.
The Debt Collector ransacked the woman`s home.
She was left with a small box of clothes, a bed, a single ring cooker,
a pet cat, her wedding ring, some black and white photographs of her family.
The woman was then visited by the police.
The police let her go with a warning.
The woman had sold her car to pay for the funeral.
The car had been abandoned by her husband.
The woman cried in the silence of her home.
That night she considered committing suicide.
The woman was aged just forty.

This just happens to be a true story,
But you will not read about it in the Press.
The woman just happens to be a gypsy
And therefore thought to be a waste of space.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 25th. - 26th. - 31st. 2014.
------------------------------------------------------------

                         2.

         Hypatia of Alexandria.


Hypatia

Black water rippling over white marble

Blood on the city streets

Locked in their orbits the distant stars look down

Ice glints on moonlit rooftops

Dogs sniffing and licking scraps of human offal

Blood on the floor of the sanctuary

Weeping Willows dropping sprigs of memory into black water

Monks wearing daggers

Astrolabes smashed into fragments

Hypatia raped and murdered inside the cathedral

Her works destroyed

Her face cut to the bone

Black water rippling over white marble

Memorials drowned in the wide sea


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 24th. 2014.