Trevor J Potter's Art: Montaigne. A fantasy. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Montaigne. A fantasy. (Revised).: Montaigne slept above the stars Following his thoughts wherever they took him on their swift nocturnal wings. "I am a man and not...

Montaigne. A fantasy. (Completed Version).

Montaigne slept above the stars
in thrall to his dreams
wherever they took him
on their swift nocturnal wings.

"I am a man and nothing is alien to me",
He whispered into his straw filled pillow. -
Outside the windows of his tower
the ice eyed owls fiercely hooted,
a Dormouse shivered among the leaves.

The Heavens that crowned his private study
revealed no debt to Copernicus,
"But what do I know? What can I know?"
Montaigne cried to the whirling stars
spinning in galaxies through the chaos
that even the nail punch of his gaze
could not split open, reveal or measure.

The Moorish treasure box of the Church,
locked deep inside his imagination,
reflected the fading lights of certainty
through the embroidery of his thoughts.
The Church had been the voice of reason
lulling his mind when he knelt to pray,
but the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle,
was it only a dead king`s bauble?

The canniest answers are seldom so simple,
and the centrifugal forces of gravity
have so far allowed the centre to hold.
Faith often seems the simplest pathway
across the dark that we cannot fathom,
but the owl and the fox patrolling the shadows
beneath the scimitar swipe of the moon
and the stars that lit Montaigne into dreams,
have only their empty stomachs to think of,
and the insatiable needs of their young.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 6th. - 7th. - 10th. 2017.
January 19th. 2018.

Note. On the ceiling of the study below Montaigne`s bedroom was painted the sky emblazoned with stars, and Gothic Architecture, central to both French and English culture, was initially inspired by the pointed arches and large decorated windows of Islamic art. The animals mentioned in this poem are both real and symbolic, part of the everyday struggle to simply survive. I am a profoundly spiritual person, but like Montaigne I must question all things all the time.

Old Fragments.

What are these poems?
How did they originate?
What thought processes
kicked them into life?
Neither thought through nor completed,
and just left hanging here
like scraps of ancient music,
echoes of old songs
suspended in mid air,
hung out to dry.

I found them in the loft.
Pegged up like negatives
in the corner of a dark room.
Their contents scratched or faded,
smudged or pencilled over;
one crudely cancelled out.
They bring to mind lost children
discarded without mercy,
abandoned upon an island.
They cry out to be rescued,
to be safely housed and loved.

I quietly scan the writing
and try to fit the words
into coherent patterns
that might make a little sense.
But I cannot break the codes,
they are adolescent products
from an era half forgotten
that does not seem relevant to these times.

And yet the handwriting is mine.
These are my tees and aitches,
the commas big fat blots.
When a boy I wrote for hours
in secret under the covers
for night after lonesome night.
This was my secret ritual,
my substitute for prayer,
my imagined contact with the big wide world.
But I was an innocent blinded
by a plethora of arcane symbols
dug out of library books.
A whirlwind of conflicting ideals
that my hand to mouth vocabulary
could not question, nor articulate.

But I shall guard these scraps of poems.
Perhaps one day they shall be better understood.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 21st. - 23rd. 2016.
February 4th. 2017.

On My Wall Hangs a Chinese Panel.

It is a strange country they live in,
Ivory black, with a white moon sinking
Below the shoreline of a gilded island.

And yet these two girls are entirely visible,
Not lost in the depths of their polished black
homeland
That reflects my gaze like an unforgiving
                                                        mirror.
These two girls seem to illuminate themselves
As though from an inner, innate brightness,
Like lauded film stars on a sunlit beach;

Except, this is not somewhere on the French
                                                            Rivera
 At the height of the hot line, photo call season,
Champagne corks popping, photographers barging
through starstruck holyday crowds.
It is Imperial China, the date indecipherable,
The Dynasty unknown, the culture refined,
The girls, in Court Dress, demure, still as the Buddha;
Two butterflies balanced on the edge of time;

Or is it timelessness, I cannot really tell,
Because the sky, the sea, the land do not
                                                         exist
In a format that is realistic and clearly logical
To my irreverent western gaze.

A framed wooden panel painted black
Represents the land, the sky, the sea
In which the gilded island floats
Above the heads of the delicate girls;

And below their feet, a second moon rises,
                                for no apparent reason.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 18th. - 28th. 2017. 

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