(1) Don`t Deny Me This. (2) A Sad Farewell to Daniel Coffey. (Revised Ending).

                  1.

When I am about to die
Put me where I can see the stars,
The moon in her perfect beauty,
The sun set - the sun rise.                   


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 2nd. 2018.

                   *
                 
                   2.

Farewell old rebel dancer,
Dear Breathless Dan,
King of the soft shoe shuffle,
At last you have broken loose
From the iron chains of gravity,
The locks and bars of time,
To merge with the sunless morning breeze
Sashaying through the battered Cavan trees
That often swayed in line to your Country Music
Sent pulsing through them morning night and noon
From over the hated border.

Farewell old friend,
Farewell old nifty Jiver,
No more will the winding mountain path
Be graced by the delicate lift and tread
Of your air soft blue suede shoes,
Or the birds that swoop over your cottage roof
Be out gunned by Bill Haley and his Comets.

But the lakeside farm where you spent your early childhood,
That was your proper home,
Your intimate heart of Ireland:
A rural landscape shaped by wind and rain.-
The night long rustling of the farmyard trees,
The knock of the water nudging withered reeds
The nearest things to music.-
And for ever after the picture book of your life,
That battered album of refracted dreams,
Would be opened at these pages
Packed with tattered photos;
The broad loch crowded with a flock of islands;
The horses quiet in the mist grey meadows;
The orchard red with apples.

Farewell old Rock n Roller,
Fermanagh will seem less rich and rare without you.-
The spring flowers in your garden
Droop low in the morning rain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 31st. - April 1st. - May 28th. 2016.
September 2nd. 2018.
For Daniel James Coffey, great Rock n Roller and Irishman of ancient family.Born 1941.Died Easter Day morning 2016.

Love Sonnet.

God spoke, and you were made.
God spoke, and all my future children touched the stars.
God spoke, and all that ever was became reborn today.
God spoke, and then the universe stopped still for just one night.
God spoke, and then you kissed me while I slept.
God spoke, and you and I became one person.
God spoke, and we were born and died and reborn in each other.
God spoke, and then I kissed you while you danced.
God spoke, and then you snuggled close beside me.
God spoke, and then we closed the door and made one single world.
God spoke, and then our world became a garden for our friends.
God spoke, and all our future children touched the morning sun.
God spoke, and then we worshipped.
God spoke, and I regained my life through you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 30th. 2016.

For Ivy.

The Woodlander`s Nightmare. A Fantasy.(First Version).

I used to love my work deep in the forests,
But now I hate it,
Vigilant packs lurking in dark places,
Red eyed, wolf like murderous hunters
Drunk on the spilled blood of their victims,
Any lost strangers who venture their way,-
Refugees stranded late at night,
Caught without friends, guards, selfless protectors,
Guides with maps and rudimentary torches,
The storm ripped trees crashing down around them,
Roots upended,
Branches shredded like ruptured veins.

I used to love my work deep in the forests,
But now the open spaces of the water meadows suit me,
Where I can walk at ease among wise children
Calm in their dreams of eternal kindness,
Fairy tale fantasies with no hob goblins
Their visions of Elysium,-
The cold lake lapping gently into tall reeds
Under the mauve shadows of the ancient Drumlins.

I used to love my work deep in the forests,
But now dark forces out of my control
Have cracked my feral heart into a thousand pieces.
My long term friends are changed to savage strangers,
Their gentle hands into great twisted knuckles,
Their kindly faces, masks of wounded hate.
But it seems I am the changeling, I am Heathcliff to them,
An undefined outsider,
Not counted one with them.
And because my long time lover is a Gypsy,
A girl with freedom etched deep in her soul,
They harass me with vows and two edged axes
To drive us both from out the woodland green.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 28th. - 29th. 2016. - April 16th. 2016.

I love the halfway land between dreaming and waking, this is where this poem comes from. But I am very much an outsider in England, I am British by default.

This Maundy Thursday Night.

Kneeling in the dark church
I study the blank walls where
My favourite icons should be
And sense infinity lifting me
On a cold wind of absence
Blasting the empty spaces
Where my childhood visions of a homely god
Once pulsed with light.

Now I know that Maundy Thursday
Is about the emptiness of loss
Of everything that I once cherished
Both human and divine, also the scientific,
Because all that I encountered in my childhood
Has dwindled into ash.

Tonight I kneel alone before the empty altar
And face the loneliness that is my inner self,
My central core of being
That frail old age has changed into a stranger.-
God is too vast to be portrayed in words
And even the weird maths that describe the universe
Confuse more than explain
The perspectives of infinity.

Faith is all that I dare need to go on living;
Faith is all that I now have to chart the silent spaces
That words cannot define.
But of one small thing I can almost be certain
That on this Easter Sunday morning
New light will once more bathe these walls in colours
More varied than the threads of Joseph`s coat,
And the icons now removed in purple shrouds
Will once more be on view
Enhanced by a mass of garden flowers.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 24th. - 25th. 2016.  
The Lady Chapel, St. Matthias Church Colindale. 

(1) Recollections of Christmas in Fermanagh. (2) Christmas Eve - Fermanagh. (3) This Easter.(4) Explaining Why I wrote "This Easter".

                 1.

Recollections of Christmas in Fermanagh.


There are few bright colours here;
The sky, pallid as a cheap shroud
Wet with a mother`s tears,
And torn by her frenzied fingers.
The sun, a Discalced Carmelite`s face
Observed behind a lattice.


At Easter time, old folk remark
That melancholy Angels chant
Strange wordless hymns on holy nights
Inside the locked cathedral;
The Golgotha carved above the door,
Lost in a cloud of lilies.


The coppice of gaunt lakeside trees
Sway ghostlike in the evening mist
As daylight drains away,
They stretch their gnarled and twisted arms
Like children begging for stale bread
From pampered strangers.


This Christmas Eve in damp Fermanagh
The silky clouds are scudding high
Out of a slate horizon.
The homeless man crouched in the market
Counts loose change into his glove
Then slips into his cardboard bed.
He feels the raw wind cut his cheekbone,
He burrows down, just like a mole, and in
                                 a moment falls asleep.

Soon the whole town is counting sheep
While the Angels guard the silent streets.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 24th. 2014. - March 19th. - 21st. 2016.
This poem is a companion piece to Christmas Eve - Fermanagh that I am here republishing because they should be read together.

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

                2.

Christmas Eve - Fermanagh.


There are no bright colours here -
The sky - pale as a shroud
Soaked in tears -
The sun - a dim white eye
Half closed among vast clouds.

The bone thin winter trees
Reach up like gnarled hands
Pleading -
Old saints desperate in prayer
Their faith undying -
Their epoch slowly fading.-
A blank horizon pressing down
Onto an ancient landscape
Haunted by a thin pale moon.

The hills are full of ghosts
Dumb echoes of time past -
Dark tales of abject poverty -
Clouds spread wide like canvas sails
That once drove famine ships.

Awaiting their congregations
The grey stone village churches
Stand like border forts -
Gaunt symbols of partition.-
I was not born here -
But I might as well have been.-
I am at home in a frontier landscape
Where nothing is fixed or certain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 24th. - 31st. 2014. - January 2nd. - May 21st. 2015. - March 19th. 2016.
Belcoo - Enniskillen - London.

-------------------------------------------------------- 
                  3.

          This Easter.

This Easter is losing Christ,
It is all about St. Pearse,
St. Connolly, St. Collins,
And all the other martyrs
Who dared not turn the cheek
And died in tragic wars.

I shall make no comment on this,
Only mention while I may
That Golgotha has become a daily
                                          scandal
With crosses overshadowing every
                                             street;
Dead infants mocked by soldiers
                           taking snapshots;
Great cultures torn apart
By bombs that fall on mosques and
                           ancient churches;
The shrines of Roman gods.

I once raised high the Tricolour for Ireland
But now I simply want to dream
                                      of peace
And place the troubles at the barren altar
And pray for some respite.
So please let us forget the savage past,
And sit at table with our foreign neighbours
To share the feast of love.

And oh yes, I must forgive old Micheal Collins
For teaching the whole world the arts of terror.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 21st. 2016.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     4.
Explaining Why I wrote "This Easter"    


I am criticising my own deep commitment to Irish Nationalism here, because I am nowadays aware how dangerous nationalism can be. It is a fine cultural ideal, but should be isolated from political violence.I have always deeply admired Michael Collins, and I was brought up knowing some of his relatives, but I am all too aware of how his fighting methods have been adopted and adapted by other less savoury individuals fighting for less honorable causes. I really do believe that "Jaw jaw is better than war war", that people should talk and not commence the journey down the road of extreme violence. Once a war has been started it is always very difficult to end it, and the end is never certain. The tragedy that is Syria, plus the toxic international repercussions, makes this all too clear. The Irish stand against British rule was entirely justified, and the men and women in the GPO in 1916 were great heroes, but the hundredth anniversary of the uprising will be on April 24th. 2016 not March 28th. I think that Jesus, Man of Peace, should be properly honored, and not have his most important festival overshadowed by national celebrations at this time when Europe is in danger of following the Middle East into the quagmire of violent political turmoil.

The day after I wrote the poem, and a few short hours after I set down this prose piece, came the news of the terrorist bomb attacks in Brussels. I rest my case.  

22nd. March 2016.

(1) St. Patrick`s Day Blues.(Revised) (2).The Lost Poems. (3) Young Christine.(No.2)

                   1

St. Patrick`s Day Blues.                
                 

Saint Paddies Day,
A gun held to the Winter`s forehead
By a green fist.

The birds woke early for the dawn chorus,
Coughing out sublime chirrups
In the cold damp air,
Their fags left smouldering in the all night cafes
While their nests fomented with deserted chicks.
I turn over once more in my snug old bed
And recall the horror of Catholic incense.

It was the longed for day of the first communion,
A hundred children queued up for the Bishop`s thumb
In a church filled to the rafters with scented smoke
Very much like a curing factory.
I ran without stopping to the Holy Well
To wash my face and suck fresh air.

It took me two days to recover from the effects of the smoke,
I lay in bed choking,
Eyes blood red,
Tongue as thick as a wad of leather,
Bruised ears throbbing with a thousand heartbeats.
That was not a blessing, that was Dante`s fire,
I thought as I stared at the bathroom mirror.

And now back in London I watch the clock
Ticking mournfully on my bedroom bookcase
Like a stern Headmaster counting out doom
Over the hands of demented students.
Saint Paddies Day is my First Day of Spring,
I should be out counting hidden crocuses,
Sprinting up hill,
Laughing at the sun.
But this world I live in is purely mechanical,
Everything run to a man made calendar
Not flexed with the seasons
Nor the heart`s desire.
Thou shalt work in a factory till thou art eighty,
Thou shalt do without thinking what billionaires tell thee.
I turn over once more in my worn out bed
Having thrown the clock straight out of the window.

St. Patrick`s Day blues, St. Patrick`s Day blues,
I will sit all alone in my sunless garden
And strain my ears for the hum of the bees,
Much softer sounding than a Thompson`s Gun.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
March 17th. 2016. - May 9th 2016.
Note:
There were more than one Saint Patrick in the proverbial Dark Ages, but there is only one St. Patrick`s Day, so I am assuming the Feast Day is for ALL the saints of that name.

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

                   2.

       The Lost Poems.


The moment that I`m buried
                        My poems will be orphaned,
Cut off from their Parish,
Abandoned children camped out on the street
Between flat cardboard end - boards
Beneath a pile of garbage,
A plastic cup extended to the strangers
                                    That hurry quickly by
Hands slapped down into pockets,
Heads turned awry to look at oddball things,
Too easily understood: -
A dog prancing on three spindly legs,
A fat girl swaying crazily on stilts,
A Copper dancing with the Lollipop Lass
Upon the Zebra Crossing,
                          A cow snagged on the moon.
Such entertainment always beats plain books,
Or meanly attired poets,
                                        For instant accolades
And snapshots flashed around the world to friends,
Meanwhile, my poems, having lost their father,
Will glance wanly up at heartless folk
Scurrying blindly home to packaged suppers
Or snooker on the Box,
And pray that some kind hearted thoughtful scholar
Might scoop them up, and hug them in his arms
In one almighty Love Fest
                                        Like an adoptive daddy,
As if he really cared about their prospects
And thought of them as though they were his own.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 16th. 2016. 

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

                     3.

   Young Christine.(No.2)


Pink snow of April blossom;
Your smile glimpsed through my window.
Memories are such fragile strangers.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 7th. - 10th. 2016.

Thoughts Before Sleeping.

Words are not essential
Only your smile,
Only the sound of your heartbeat
In the dark.

Words are not essential
To learn love.

Words are not essential
To know that I am needed,
To know that you are with me,
To know that I am loved.

The silence when you`re absent
Is true Hell,
A Hell that even Dante did not view
When guided by sad Virgil.
The winds that twist and furrow Arctic ice
Are easier to endure.

Words are not essential.
Words are not essential to find love.

At night you dream you hear the roses grow,
Growing in a land I cannot reach,
A land of secret gardens.
For hours I lie awake,
A stranger close beside you.
I keep silent watch for dawn and your return.

Words are not essential.
Words are not essential to know love.
Only the touch of your soft breath
On my shoulder.
Only your smile when you first awake.

The awareness of your presence by my side
Is now everything I need.
Words are not essential for our love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 12th. - 13th. - 14th. - 2016.