(1) Easter 1966. For J P....(New Version). (2). Wild Cat Poem.

                               1.

                   Easter 1966. For JP.


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 side by side whispering ballads,
Their words long since forgotten.

One night we wove two wedding rings from strands of cotton;
But the plaintive wail of the passing trains
Told of unplanned journeys.

Twice we consulted the cards, measured our life lines.
Your fate seemed tied to the north,
Mine to the south, hard by the docks and the river.

Girl
This poem is an intimate letter
Encrypted into the dark
On the keyboard of my computer.

I have not, for one moment, ceased pining,
And time does not value compassion.
Please send a few words tomorrow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. - 12th. 2014.
Rewritten October 7th. - 8th. 2014.
Sightly revised April 6th. - july 22nd. 2015.
                       
                       ------------------

                               2.

                    Wild Cat Poem.


           Brendan Parker - Odell
           Cat of a thousand claws
           Why have you never caught a mouse
           In your multifaceted paws?



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. 2014.

Your Mother? Oh Yes, I do remember your mother.

Your mother displayed the nerve of a cormorant
That was noted for skewering its victims unawares
As they skirmished through the turbulent dark
Atlantic waters            That scudded and swirled
Beneath the jagged rock she plummeted from
Like a stone dropped by an expert marksman.
This was the method by which she ruined the lives
Of all who came between her and her need
To be the best known chancer on the basalt,
The absolute mistress of all that she surveyed.
Thus utilizing her Jurassic hunting instincts
She smashed and bashed a shoal of frail young hearts
By snatching her prey from under their partners noses,
While keeping her own thick skin unscathed in the process.

Your mother? Oh Yes, I do remember your mother.
I hope to God I never meet such another !



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 6th. 2014. - July 22nd. 2015.

My Ideal Funeral.(Revised).

             
When I die
Let there be
No curtained Hearse
To carry me
Along the Hampstead High Street
Elegantly.
But on a market barrow let me go,
Big Band drummers tapping
Quick - Quick - Slow
On muffled skins and cymbals
Ecstatically.

And when the Party`s over,
Late at night,
Dig a deep deep hole
Well out of sight
In boggy Kenwood
Surreptitiously.
There leave my corpse,
Secreted after dark
Beneath beer cans and ferns,
Blackberries - condoms - fungi. -

Then plant a willow tree.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Sketched Spring 1962. - Lost, then part remembered 1st. - 2nd. October 2014.
Completed as originally imagined 13th. June 2020.

(A). Fragments of a Dark World. (B). The Woman in the Moon. (C). Lines Written in the Cloister of Westminster Abbey.

                       A.

     Fragments of a Dark World.

Red tooth and claw. Red tooth and claw.
That is all life is. That is all. That is all.

                      1.

Arctic Owls have been observed attacking prey
In the sharp clearness of the northern day
Leaving red traces on the melting snow,
Bleak warning signs, or the discarded debris
Of smashed up lives in a hostile landscape.
Only the clear eyed Naturalist knows the worth
Of all that is lost in an instant.

                     2.

Darkly flies the hunting Owl.
A shadow stretched across the moon.
A blur of wings. A skull cracked open.
A trace of murder staining snow.
Darkly flies the hunting Owl.

                      3.

Locked in my hideout I fight the weight of these nightmares
Forcing my injured body down onto the concrete floor.
I grasp my camera as though it were a rifle.

The circling Hawk does not mind the strain of the long wait,
The dawn wind rocking his body,
His talons aching for prey.
                       
                      4.

Trapped in the ruins a journalist scans the rooftops.
The morning quietness is splintered by rifle fire.
Somewhere a child is crying.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Fragments sketched between 1971.- 1984. 
Partly rewritten September 25th. - 26th. 2014.
Section 4 written September 25th. 2014. 

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

                      B.

The Woman in the Moon.        (After the watching the satirical play by John Lyly).

You came into my room
Not a ghost, not a dream,
But real as the face in the mirror
That spoke to me.

I turned my back to the window.-
The image of your face
Shattered into diamond dust
When I closed my eyes.

The moon that I spied through the glass
Was pocked and ill favoured,
Not like Pandora`s dream
Of a matriarchs sanctuary.

I miss you, but fair maid, we were not for each other;
You degraded Utopia with your forthright inconstancy.
My flocks are scattered,
The fruit trees unladen.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 20th. - 24th. - 25th. 2014.

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

                     C.

Lines Written in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey.


Something permanent, elusive, but clear,
In cold stone leaps the fire divine.
The spires fathom the quiet air,
The sunlight steeps the glass in wine.

Break not the bread, I`ll take it whole
To ease the conquest of my soul.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 20th. 1972. - December 7th. 1980.

Three Short Poems For Aunt May.

                         1.

                  Endgame.


There are no poems in the eyes of the dead
Only the shadow of a sun gone out
Ash white and drifting


=========================
     
                         2.

          Fractured Thoughts.


Girl
Afraid to look at my wounded hand -
A broken bough
Not yet cut down

Can`t you accept the world as it is?
Red leaves descending upon a worn path -
The stumps of felled trees
Overgrown by saplings


==========================

                        3.

            Harvest Moon.

Tonight the moon drifts among clouds
A ghost ship
A lonesome bird without wings


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 18th. 2014.

Three poems to be read together, written in memory of
May Langdon nee` Odell, who died during the night of
the 16th. - 17th. September 2014.

A Portrait of Myself at Twenty.

I seeking the cut of man
Have worn out floorboards at Promenade Concerts,
Marched from Aldermaston to London,
Listened to speeches at Speakers Corner,
And have ended up none the wiser.

I have sat in a pub for half the night
Quietly reading Ginsberg and Shakespeare,
Chasing girls when I had a mind to,
Occasionally getting slightly drunk,
But this did not do me much good either.

I was in hot retreat from the world that I loved,
In retreat from the spotlight and live theatre,
The itch of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd,
But that is my life, I can live no other.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
11th. September 2014.

The first two lines were written in 1963, the rest was composed 11th. September 2014. 
For much of my life I have tried to live as part of the crowd, live as an observer, but really I am a natural performer. 

The Private Photo-Shoot. (Revised).

I lift your photograph off the shelf
with a nervous hand.
I should have smoothed back
that wild tangle of auburn
before I adjusted the close up lens
and flicked the shutter open.

I was creating an icon of you
with diffused lighting
and muted greys and blues;
But an icon can never be more
than a simple mirror image
of what the camera sees.
Such beauty must remain
an ephemeral abstraction
artfully arranged
on a glossy scrap of paper.

I study deep the fragile mysteries
of startled, half closed eyes,
black in their hooded alcoves,
small elemental fragments
from the dark side of your moon.
This is the only trophy of that long ago weekend
that remains now in my keeping,
An image, mostly fiction,
that can be shredded in an instant.

Consistency is something I`m not good at,
which makes me, sometimes, hard to get along with,
but we had always vowed to keep in touch,
and even maybe share a house together,
But, as you see, none of this has happened.

I kiss the faded outline of your lips,
Then place the photo back upon the shelf
Where it usually resides, almost unnoticed,
Between a stack of old unanswered letters
And a pile of half read books.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 1st. 2012. - July 18th. - 19th. 2014.
September 8th. - 13th. - 15th. 2014.

A re-write of Midnight Goddess.