Autumn Pruning.

Sorry Mister Spider
I have to encourage the new growth
and you made your home in the old wood
that I must now cut down.

Next year I require fat loganberries
to cover with sugar and cream,
and I am less occupied with house flies
than you appear to be.

So forgive the use of these secateurs
that I brandish with such ease,
I am planning a cascade of white flowers
to entice my co workers, the bees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 10th. 2015. 

(1) September Dusk. (2) Cabbage Fly. revised. (3) Love. (4) The Lion.

               1.

  September Dusk.


September evening

The sky like
a Chinese painting

black boughs
dropping
paper leaves



The copper sun
washed out
turning ochre

a bruised apple
burst
on the hard earth

tainted

breaking down



I walk alone              in the cold air

trying to get used              to my loneliness



It is now six weeks
since you died

Passed
like a withered flower
out of my life

yet tonight
I am sensing
the pressure of your soft breath
nudging my cheek

Your hand         clutching mine

warm as a midsummer morning


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - 14th. 2015.

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

                2

       Cabbage Fly. (Revised).


White as my notepad
I am tempted to write on your wings
A miniature monograph
On the history of flight.

But the moment I enter the Hot House
You seem to get wind of my meaning
And flit right up to the ceiling
Where you sit tight until I leave.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 3rd. - 4th. - September. 10th. 2015.

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

               3.

            Love.


Birthday gift
Secret
No more

Ribbons undone
Spread over the floor

A glass of wine
Spilt on the table

A torn cushion

A slammed door


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 5th. - 17th. 2015.

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

                4

         The Lion.



"It was a legal hunt"
The white man said.

The lion did not think so.

The lion is now dead.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2015.

Aylan. The tragedy that Changed Everything. (New Poem).

One image can change the world.

One image can punch harder
than any word
in any book
ever written.

One image can show the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth
without any trace of redacting.

One image can remake a religion.

One image can shake the most hard hearted
man
to the lonely core
of his being.

(I once saw an SS veteran weep
at the sight of cygnets hatching)

One image can force us to witness
our shared humanity
in the eyes of a child who is dying.

One image can make us see
the anguish of a displaced people
Who speak in a foreign language.

One image can speak out louder than any words.

One image can teach us to know
that nothing human is ever foreign;
not the outcast, the tortured, the refugee.

One image can show us that war
is a savage human sickness
that somehow must be cured.

One image can force a politician
to serve the population
that one time he thought he ruled.

One image can remake a civilisation.

One image can teach us to understand
The vulnerability of all that is good.
The vulnerability of human love.

One image can activate a reformation.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 6th. 2015.

The Migrant. (A Lost Soul in Modern Britain).

I am a migrant.
I come from a foreign place,
A maligned country
Once renowned for fairness and equality,
For intellectual tolerance
And racial harmony,
But now torn apart by factions,
By greedy warlords,
By smart suit racists,
By ignorant fundamentalists,
By rich fools bating the poor.
These are the individuals I now write to.

I am a migrant,
An unwilling frightened traveller
Forever on the move
With nothing in my back pack,
Pockets torn and empty,
Fighting to cross frontiers,
The fiercely guarded barriers
Of self interest and inhumanity,
Of terror and self doubt.

I am a migrant,
But I do not come from Syria,
From Afghanistan,
From Africa,
The once civilised Palmyra.
I have not changed my dwelling
For more that forty years,
I have not been kicked into the highway
Covered in blood and tears.

You cannot handcuff me and fly me home,
Efficiently deport me,
Shove me on a wagon and transport me,
Lock me in a Death Camp,
Cut me down at dawn.
I am a refugee from the time when I was born,
April 27th. 1943,
My place of birth, London,
Then at war with tyranny.

But it seems that you can casually ignore me,
Deride my "Love thy neighbour" eccentricity,
Cut access to free knowledge,
Deny my right to speak.
You can, it seems, defile my old ideals;
Smash up my hope, the humane Welfare State,
Maroon me on the narrow beach of history,
And leave me there to drown.


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

Grief.

Now that you are dead
The dawn is a blank curtain
Pulled across the sun
To hide the light.

Your voice on the chrome cassette,
A mono echo of time past
Relayed through a single speaker
In the corner of my room.

My hand that held your hand
Now only grasps the air
That once you breathed:
The air you filled with song
When I first spoke your name.

Paper flowers in the vase
Have turned as grey as ash,
Grey as your brittle bones
Now buried in the earth.

And yet our yesterday
Is as clear and bright as spring
In the confines of my mind,
The jewel box of my memory.

But the contents are just a mirage
Flashed on a silver screen;
They remain as insubstantial
As your sweet recorded voice.

I do not long for death,
But without you life seems empty,
A shadow of the clear bright days
That once we knew.

I do not long for death,
But I need a private sanctuary
Where I can learn to make my peace
With this dark remorseless pain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 30th. - 31st. 2015.
September 8th. 2015.

(1) A Tragic Event, Belsize Park 1985. (2) Four Short Poems. (3). September Poem. (Revised Version).

                 1.

       A Tragic Event.



On the ground - the boots.
Next to them - the body.
My first ever real life corpse
Lying there
In the dusk,
Still as a stone.

Something to note in the diary.
Something to snap on the phone.
A notable event,
A once in a lifetime story
To startle jaundiced eyes.
An accident,
A suicide,
A murder.
A dark chapter suddenly opened.
A nasty surprise.

The man had fallen
From the adjacent building
Without due notice,
Without due warning,
That sultry evening.
With luck the neighbours were all inside
Bewitched by the spell of the 6 o`clock News;
History should happen elsewhere,
Not by the communal stair.

The building was now strangely silent
An hour or so after the event,
The corpse left alone,
Covered by a scarlet blanket,
To keep it private, unscary
while awaiting the Constabulary. -
Absent the crying children,
Absent the squabbling parents,
Absent the loud radios
That have revved up my tinnitus
Each time that I walked this way.
Today - just this unearthly stillness
As if the whole world had paused -
Had stopped breathing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 23rd. - 24th. - 26th. 2015.  

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

                     2.

       Four Short Poems.


            The Hermit.


Born Underground.
Bombs falling.
Death will be no stranger.
           

            Love Poem.


You came to me in the hot night
Dressed in a kaftan of purest silk,
A glass of water in your hand.


              Postscript.


White paper,
Black lines criss crossing,
Leading nowhere.


             Celebration.


The fireworks were surely for us,
The Last Night Party irrelevant;
Your smile broke all the windows.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 4th. - August 3rd. 2015.

The little poem Celebration is dedicated to my dear friend Cilla who died on August 1st. We had known each other since our early teens. She is so much missed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

              3.

 September Poem.


                           She loved me
                                                  and in September
She wore the curling leaves in her hair
                           As we walked by
                                                  the mist hued waters
Where geese with clipped wings dipped their beaks for bread

                           and later
                                                  in the park she held me
while the red moon rose while buzzed the night crazed gnats
                           and great boughs
                                                  dropped noon ripe apples
Into our waiting palms


                           Then quietly
                                                Hands clasped
                                                                         we drifted
                   Towards the dying embers of the sun
                           Out through white gates
                                     into a city
        Where hi tech threads of neon lights were spun
                               into a flimsy tent
                     Out dazzling the faded stars
                                Until autumnal
                                         mist
Dissolved all sense of wonder - and proved our love talk
dumb

And then you smiled                More loving than at night
And spilled a sudden clarity       Into the cold dawn light


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1965.
Final two lines, September 23rd. 1983.
Revised October 12th. 2012. - August 29th. - September 9th. 2015.

The Funeral, 20th. August 2015.

It was the smallness of the coffin that shocked me.
Could a whole life be locked away in that tight box
As if it had never happened?
The laughter - the wit - the frankness - the comments that could shatter glass? -
The sweetness - the kindness - the big fierce voice?
This was a whole world, a mini solar system, a multiplex of universes,
It was not something miniscule, irrelevant,
It was truly culture shifting.
Could all this be lost in an instant,
Dropped into the silent darkness,
Switched off ?
(The memories that should last
Confined to the fading minds
Of old and vulnerable people?)

What can I now say in public
About the girl I first met in the market,
That cold wet Liverpool morning?
(You managed to haggle the last half pence
Out of my schoolboy pocket).
And years later, in sunless Goodge Street,
Laughing like raucous street kids
We swingled a paint box of rainbows,
The punters too drunk to join in.
Then glitzed up at The Savoy,
(Just a trillion miles out of the Cavern),
You singing your Scouser heart out,
Me somewhere at the edge of the audience,
But not quite lost in the crowd.

Well yes, I suppose that is how it was all meant to be
Once the long old road had been travelled,
(The last interview tape unravelled,
The final song packed in the can).
But somehow it just seems so unfair
That your life could be crushed in an instant
In the glare of a Spanish heatwave,
The sunlight so bright on your face.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 20th. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2015.

For Cilla.