Trevor J Potter's Art: Remembering that Einstein had Problems with Time. ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Remembering that Einstein had Problems with Time. ...: I love the sound of my little clock Ticking quietly in the corner, An electronic heartbeat driving the world To a strict metallic rhythm...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Semi Rural. (2) Dream Laden Spring. (New Versi...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Semi Rural. (2) Dream Laden Spring. (New Versi...:                  1.          Semi Rural. Snuggled among the trees The houses                    Like beehives Waiting for the swarms...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Semi Rural. (2) Dream Laden Spring. (New Versi...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Semi Rural. (2) Dream Laden Spring. (New Versi...:                  1.          Semi Rural. Snuggled among the trees The houses                    Like beehives Waiting for the swarms...

Dream Laden Spring. (Completed).

The morning after we celebrated your birthday
the wind turned mild;
pale daffodils rocked like dreaming children
beside the quiet river;
skeletal trees ducked and weaved under white clouds
that drifted silent as swans.
Winter had shuffled off to an early sleep over
on the peaks of far away mountains.

And then, as was usual at this time of year,
intoxicating rumours awoke and quickly flourished
among old travellers crouched around the camp fire,
A cornucopia of wizened Fortune Tellers
who whispered madly into pots and pans.-

The phoenix was seen alive upon a Monday,
she zig zagged on fire through a galaxy of branches.
A unicorn, tamed by a young girl`s whisper,
pranced for an hour in the April snow.
A dog faced boy lay dead in a cot.
A wolf brought shame on a red cloaked virgin,
then gobbled all her cookies up on the spot.
A milch cow cited Homer to the vicar.
A horse gave birth to a brindled cat.

A chicken laid an egg packed with diamonds. 
A cockerel baked the farmer in his coarse linen smock.-
Tall tales clutched to old hearts like rare silver
now that the cold times were almost gone.

But we two, we could not dream, not you and I,
We had known too much sorrow since late December
when the surgeon failed to save our unborn child,
and nearly killed you when he cut too deep.

We remained locked inside your grandad`s Vardo,
curled snug in a ball like new born kittens,
mute in our sorrow, afraid of our grief, but not wanting to die,

stone deaf and blind to the change in the weather.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
First sketched March 10th. 2011. 
Revised September 5th. - 6th. - 9th. - October 21st. 2013.
Completely rewritten June 15th. - August 27th. 2016.

October 17th. 2020.

The many European influences on this poem are very clear, especially the Brothers Grimm; and the Welsh Gypsies referred to in this poem, originated in Rajasthan 1000 years ago. Britain owes a huge amount of it`s culture to the rest of the world. This has never been an island isolated from the Eurasian continent, but has always been a part of the Eurasian mainstream. We are a very European people.

(1) Jazz, a Fantasy in Theatreland. (2) Two Pensees.

                     1.

Jazz, a Fantasy in Theatreland. 


The melancholy rat a tat of jazz
Makes me feel peculiarly lazy,
Subterraneum counter culture icky,
Down town street kid crazy,
Back room clubhouse hazy,
Black coffee with my sweetheart in the sleepless half light of a footloose
                                                                                         Soho dawn sicky,
& dead dead dead to the tick a tick a tick a of the mean time monitoring
                                                                                                          clock
In the universal office schlock / prison block
Of the everyday work a day world.


& jazz jazz jazz
is like a grey damp cloth swabbed over my sleep creased work wearied
                                                                                                      eyelids
To keep me awake
But not fully compos mentis
In a strange half light of unfocused slick stick silhouettes
Dancing dancing dancing
Without rhyme or repeatable rhythm
On a flat white tattered screen.


Thus I sit in this Bankside coffee house
As patient as a monk at Compline
But waiting for God knows what.
Perhaps that sylvan winged woman at the cashpoint opposite
Will slash open the white tattered curtain
With a smile of iridescent love,
A love as yet unhinted, unspoken;
Then, with the speed of a pedigree dove, fly in through the cafe window
To airlift me to her stage right paradise.
Or shall I simply get up from the bland coffee table
And lurch blear eyed into the sunshine
Before that guy playing chess in the corner
Throws his killer queen at the radio
To cut the music dead?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 7th. - 8th. - 9th. 2016.

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

                     2.

         Two Pensees.

        
        Porcelain Cup.


This porcelain cup
Is more than a thousand years old
Yet entirely new to me,
Newer than your soft white palm
That now so gently holds it.


                   *

      The White Coat.


My little white coat
That I threw across your bare shoulders
Has become a neat cocoon,
Lightweight, detached and portable,
Your little house of threads.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 2016.

Remembering that Einstein had Problems with Time. (Revised)

I love the sound of my little clock
Ticking quietly in the corner,
An electronic heartbeat driving the world
To a strict metallic rhythm.
But I do not believe the news it bleeps precisely
On every passing hour, half hour and quarter,
Because the world is not a man made thing,
A compound mechanism or a smart computer,
And cannot be perfectly kept in order
Like a game of chess or the factory floor,
Or a smooth running Daimler guzzling oil.

Time is an indeterminate strange thing,
Different for every culture; each man, each woman;
And every creature that sleeps upon the Earth.
The butterfly thinks it has lived forever,
As does the bumble bee, gazelle or camel,
The half blind infant born this very night.
And aging folk ignore the final bell
While they sit in groups around the bar room table
To tell the stories that they always tell
Because their childhoods` glow in fiercer light.
I personally prefer the instincts of the Roma,
Awake at dawn, then swift to bed under the flight of Sirius
In bowtop wagons where timeless dreams are born,
And the future seems rock solid, not mysterious.

The rule of the clock is a mere sad waste of ticking,
Except sometimes for the comfort it may bring
To the long fraught hours of sporadic, fitful sleeping,
When the pummeled eye of dawn is far too raw to open,
And the larks too cold to sing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 9th. - June 3rd. - 4th. 2016.

The title of this poem recalls Einstein`s belief in a steady state universe against all the evidence of his on exemplary calculations.

The Bethlehem Angel.(New Version).

The plaster falls away,
And gradually,
Like a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis,
The gold angel is glimpsed
Shimmering in the dusty gloom,
A burnished icon,
A cleansed mirror touched by the morning sun
For the first time since Byzantium was crushed.

The clouds of dust that speck the summer air
Shape a curtain adrift between two worlds
A millennium apart
But linked by a common, timeless language,
Sung in daily prayers.
Outside the church the soldiers stride in pairs
Oblivious to the miracle taking place
Behind the battered doors.
Armed sons of Abraham, of tortured Isaac,
Patrolling where the sacred Lamb was born.

Indeed it truly is a perfect miracle
That the angel should return in this dark time
Of bitter conflict in the streets outside
Between related cultures.
Muslim and Christian children shot and maimed
While playing in the dust that Joseph trod
When guiding Mary to her bed of straw.

The archaeologist cleans the angel`s head,
A mosaic presence glistening through the gloom
Of incense heavy air
That fills the nave enriched by echoing chants.
And as we stand in awe of this rare icon
Of hope restored, of trust, of infinite grace,
It seems the angelic face reveals our wonder
To reflect back to us who we really are.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 30th. - 31st. 2016.(New Version).
Radically revised March 8th. 2017.