In the Library.

Reading is listening.

A voice in the head
Telling a different story
To that we imagine.

Although he has been dead one hundred years
The poet sings deep in the skull
Of the student
Who studies his words.

The inner voice of the student
Is the voice of the poet,
But to the reader only,
Not to those who observe him.

If the student spoke
The poems out loud
He only would speak to us,
Not the poet.

It is in the privacy of our minds
That the writer can communicate
Without an intermediary.

Then we almost touch the hand
That scratched the words
In a hurry
On scraps of paper.

Moving the pen
To the pulse of his breath,
The knock of his heart.

But that is only imagining,
Not true listening.

The truth is a different story.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 15th. 2014.

Written in response to the play Bronte by Polly Teale.

October 10th. 2014. (Revised).

In this pale October sunlight
I find myself almost blind.

Diverse townscapes merging into sameness,
A blur of glass and concrete
Vanishing
Like a smog tarnished dream.
Nothing original sacred,
Allowed to remain
As it was
Before this strange disintegration.
Once pristine contours
Half rubbed out, smoky,
Their subtleties ironed into a flatness
That ice cannot emulate.

Blue sky fades like old embroidery
Exposed to too much brightness
On a Monday afternoon.
November is knocking on the door
With a gloved fist,
A cough,
A coarse laugh,
Cigarette breath blown in through the air vents
Choking the ventricles.
My heart stops for a moment
And then resumes
Fitfully
To a sombre music.
Your voice heard down the answer phone
Reinstates the fallacies of hope.

When a student
I would like to sit at home
Reading Keats and Shakespeare
Half way through the night;
Red Bird on the turntable
Introduced the clear cut modern
To my careful listening;
This jazz and poetry rip-roaring through my mind
Like a tonic.
In those days I had no fear of death,
Only this fear of your extended absence.

Now I sit and write from dawn to dusk
Poems that paraphrase a dislocated existence.
Please look me up tomorrow; please keep your long term promise,
So that I can pull these torn threads back together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 10th. - 11th. - 12th. 2014.
July 22nd. 2015.

(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.