Houses.

The houses are all innocence,
Little red brick boxes
Packed together like cases on a shelf,
Lined up spic and span in a nice neat row
Ready to receive the latest batch of people;
Honeycombs upright on a concrete pathway
Not yet oozing honey.

It is the people who stuff the houses up with character,
Gives them their interest,
Gives them their souls,
Gives them their grace and favour,
Life stories that settle the bills.
In that house over there for instance,
A man resides with his two fat wives
And a battleground of children.
And that neat house down the street
Contains a secret
That is not so sweet,
A mass murderer once filled its drains with corpses
While his girl friend made the tea,
She once made a cup for me.
And over the road, adorned in her fur trimmed hats,
The lady who quarantines cats
Is gradually stinking out the street.

The houses are all innocence indeed,
Its what we do with them that makes the difference,
How we make or break them,
Ship or shape them,
Let them tumble into ruins or keep them up to date.
My house is a case in point,
Something to talk about,
There is a crack across the window pane and it needs a spot of paint,
But who cares really, who really really cares?
A spot of paint can wait.
I am busy writing poems when I should be tending to such matters,
A poem is always urgent
Like the birthing of a baby or the baking of a cake,
A spot of paint can wait.
What you see on the outside is of no consequence at all,
Except to the nosey neighbours.
What is taking place inside is the true momentous story.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 26th. - 27th. 2015.
For Anne, who taught me how to trust my writing. 

(1) Christine.(New Version). (2) On Beachy Head.

                1.

         Christine. (New Version).



I remember the daisy chain I made for you;
You laughing like the small child that you were,
                                      innocent as a Butterfly;
A curved black feather crushed between your
fingers,
             A straw boater balanced on your head,
The crown torn open.


I thought that you would live
for ninety years.
But last night your friends cut through the door and found you,
A fifty year old woman face downward on the floor,
Two emptied vodka bottles by your elbow,
                  A burnt out cigarette stuck to your lips.
An unused railway ticket in your purse.
You looked just like a tattered fabric doll, a once loved toy
                  Chucked by a fretful infant.


And scattered all around you on the carpet,
The love letters that you had never posted
Lay in untidy heaps.
You had kept them in a bag under your bed
Stored with some fairground keepsakes, a handful
                                            of dried flowers,
A beat up hat, the remnants of a feather.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 23rd. - 24th. - 25th. 2015.
June 20th. 2015.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

                    2.

      On Beachy Head.



Edge,
Such a final poem.
Maybe there was nothing to say after that.
Maybe it was time for the black sky to fall.

Beneath the white cliff wall the seagulls are wheeling.
Perhaps if I dive now I can catch one in flight,
Hitch a lift on a small wet back.

Edge,
The raw waves rustle through the rough hewn shingle
A broken lifeline below my gaze,
I am not as blind as the martyred Gloucester,
But my luck ran out at my conception.

There is no Poor Tom to break my swift fall;
No strong arm to reach out, to pull me back.
Edge,
Beneath the white cliff wall the wave surge
Saps my will power, rips my nerve.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. 2015.

Parliament Hill Fields Revisited. (New Version).

Those kids you wrote about had hardly noticed you.
You were simply a woman standing on a hill
Notebook in hand,
Your expression slightly abstracted,
Slightly unconnected with the moment
That they completely occupied.
You were merely part of the landscape that they owned,
An object to be ignored, to be quickly shuffled around,
Or brusquely nudged aside.

You were a mother snatching an hour of peace and quiet,
Observing the city, the bomb scabbed human hive,
The battered streets
Spread wide in skeins of mist below the park.
But it was not the view that occupied your thoughts,
Not the smoke black towers, the gaps between the houses,
The nests of cranes like splinters in the sky; -
The embryo of a poem, conceived from signs and sound-bites,
Was forming brand new stories in your head;
Stories that spoke of children, alive or dead.

That moment was long ago, and the passing crocodile of infant egos
Has long since shunted out of primary school
To occupy the world of adult angst. Those kids have grown quite old now,
And your poem has been fifty years in print,
A text for first year students; a classic to be wondered at.
But those schoolgirls in the park that February day, -
Grandmums perhaps, comfy in post war flats, -
I doubt that few recall that classroom outing,
Or a woman standing windblown on Kite Hill,
A notebook in her hand.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
12th. - 15th. - 18th. - 19th. - 20th. May 2015.

Locally the hill is known as Kite Hill, because it is the perfect location from which to fly a kite.
When I was fourteen or fifteen I had the great good luck to spend an evening and a day in the company of Sylvia Plath. We talked about Keats, a new discovery for me at the time, and she impressed upon me the supreme importance of poetry. God bless her.

(1) Sappho, Fragments still tell us........(2) End of Spring.

                           1.

Sappho, Fragments still tell us.............



Sappho......................your voice always
...............................................................
Only......................................................
It is not your sexuality that intrigues me,
It is just that your poems are pure music
Designed to be sung in our hearts.
................................................................
......................................................indeed
................the briefest of fragments.........
....dropped among Samian Ware..............
.................discarded sandals.....................
..................................................................
..................................................................
.....the fetid remnants of an army cesspit..
..................................................................
Is this, perhaps, the future of all culture?..
To be part extinguished in rubble, and......
....half rotted excrement.............................
...................................................................
...........................but yes.............................
Our (responsibilities) .....always with us... .
............................travails in the underworld
.....irrevocable loses.....................................
So.................................................................
.....................................................................
........................................Sappho, I..............
............in my time........................continue...
and................................................................
.......aware of your guidance.........................
......................................................................
.......the wind touched Lyre...........................
............................................................O.......
..........the Lark overhead...............................
..............................................soaring.............



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 7th. - 8th. - 16th. 2015.

Written while listening to the results of the General Election.

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

                        2.      


            End of Spring



 The Tulips are falling apart
          Broken vessels
Losing their hold on the sun



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 15th. 2015.

Violette.

My beautiful friend,
The very first person I struggled to walk to
When I was an infant.

So little remains, books littered with snapshots,
Blurred shadows printed on flimsy white paper,
Two girls standing in a doorway.

No where can I find your authentic smile,
The waves of laughter that shook the house
When you came to tea,

The vibrancy of your hug.

But these are the things that haunt me always,
Not the print of your name in a slab of marble,
Nor the honours heaped on you after death.

In my mind I still see the girl with dark hair
Who swung me up high onto her shoulder
To kiss my forehead.

I could not imagine that you were a soldier,
That in less than eight months the Nazis would shoot you,
Crush your ashes into the rubble

Under the road into Ravensbruck.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 10th. - 11th. 2015.
Rewritten April 25th. 2017.

Violette Szabo was the first person that I ever walked unaided to when a small child. This was at my maternal grandmother`s council house in Cricklewood, North West London. Although I was so very young I have never forgotten her vibrant personality.

Dream Portrait. (Revised).

Last night I drew your portrait in my mind,
A delicate pencil sketch
That scarcely marked the white paper,
A flat image bereft of depth or shadow.

I have almost forgotten the colours in your eyes,
The tender lilt of your Irish voice,
The remarks that kept me in order;
But the furrow that sometimes formed upon your forehead,
Especially when I hurt you, haunts me always,
Much like a jagged scar that never fades.

This attempt at veracity was a dismal failure,
It was, after all, only a dreamed up image, distinctly monochrome,
A hazy outline of who I think you are,
Much like a memory not touching the heart of the matter.

Time past I could recall a clearer image,
A Kodachrome portrait precise in every detail, as taken from real life:
But now I am old it seems safer for me to pretend
That I cannot remember true facts, only their pale facsimiles.

And perhaps I have been dishonest for much of my life,
Not staring truth straight in the face, but always askance,
And therefore have lost my way, my sense of purpose,
And the person I dared to cherish.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 7th. - 8th. - July 24th.2015.

(1) The Destruction of the Museum. (2) Lunar Eclipse.

                     1.

The Destruction of the Museum.



The museum had been torched to a shell in less than a day. -
The art works destroyed in the fire represented innocence
And were deserving of rescue,
But the money that purchased those art works was cold and cruel,
Minted in African blood.

Power was imposed with an 18th. centuary nonchalance,
The locking of shackles;
The slash of a pound sign across a slave boy`s back;
The shriek of a child in the face of the Boss Man`s anger
As he casually mauled her mother with manicured hands
That daily caressed the whip.

At night these same hands would lift intricate porcelain figures
With the care of a spider spinning a delicate web
In the cool of an Autumn sun down,
Or the gentleness of the museum`s distraught curator
Sifting through heaps of ash.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 3rd. - 4th. 2015. 

The full title of this poem is, The Destruction of the Museum that was once a Planter`s House.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  2.

      Lunar Eclipse.



An eclipse is never total
The sun absorbs the errant moon
Into it`s bright corona -
A crystallized circle of light
Glistening like a diamond ring
Displayed on a black cushion.

This is how love is revealed
At those times when we try to conceal it -
A distinct but fragile aura
That illuminates averted faces
When we try to ignore each other -
Try to keep close to the shadows.

Thus it was at last night`s party
When you walked by me not speaking
Into a room packed with strangers -
Crowd fillers with too much to say.-
Only you brought life into the action -
Gave me a reason to be there -
Edged my dark world with light.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 2015.
April 29th. - 30th. - May 4th. - June 7th. 2015.

I was thinking of two very distinct occasions when writing this poem.
The eclipse of 2015 and an after show party in 2007.