Trevor J Potter's Art: The Holy Feast, Launcelot Andrewes, Southwark Cath...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Holy Feast, Launcelot Andrewes, Southwark Cath...: Our saint`s tomb is buried in autumn flowers cut down at dawn, the dew still fresh on them, but soon to lose their colour, shape and scen...

The Holy Feast, Launcelot Andrewes, Southwark Cathedral.

Our saint`s tomb is buried in autumn flowers
cut down at dawn, the dew still fresh on them,
but soon to lose their colour, shape and scent.
These flowers are martyrs picked to sanctify
those honoured words first spoken by our saint
at Christmastide
to jostling festal crowds
when vicar of St. Giles in Cripplegate,
words terse but packed with mystery.
"A cold coming we had of it", like any night time journey
when footsore camels groused, their packs too heavy,
and shooting stars the only signs to follow
when seeking for one child among so many.

The saints effigy now seems so out of place, being 17th. century,
lodged under the Caen stone arches, the delicate rib vaulting
raised in record time by pilgrim monks,
who had trudged from Northern France to build this sanctuary
not long after the Norman knights had conquered,
then laid waste feisty England with axe and fire and sword.
In this world the horse was worth more than a wife,
a bull more than a serf, a mastiff more than money;
and monks were two a penny.

These flowers represent an ancient pagan custom
revived to add some grace to modern times,
their  heads lopped neatly off, just like the Tyburn martyrs
although our saint died snugly tucked in bed.

But it is that girl, standing silent in the crowd,
her appearance innocent as a Van Eyck angel,
who captivates my gaze,
 disrupts my quest for peace,
my search for equilibrium.
A lonely figure, the only person standing
through every minute of the festive Mass.
A King James Bible in her trembling fingers.
Her grey eyes bright with tears.
She reminds me of my friend who played St. Joan
so truthfully she could have been the saint,
and for an hour or more, perhaps two hours,
I feel ashamed to be here in this church,
a shame that dislocates me from the prayers.
I feel that I would try to dodge the flames
with an unworthy, trite, vain recantation,
if I should be brought to the time of trial.
But this girl, I see her fierce before the judges,
proclaiming truth, integrity and love,
with incandescent power.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
September 26th. - 27th. 2016. - February 16th. 2017.

Like most people, I first discovered Launcelot Andrewes famous sermon through reading T S Eliot, who quoted the opening sentences of the sermon in his poem Journey of the Magi. For some reason, Eliot did not disclose his source. The other great piece of writing by Andrewes is his translation of The Book of Ruth in the King James Bible. The girl in Southwark Cathedral was perhaps a tourist, I have only seen her once.

Poet at The Proms.

I remember him at The Proms,
The North of Ireland man
Hooked on poetry and Bruckner,
A squat figure among excited fans.

We talked of farms and guns,
The hard labour of digging turf and spuds,
The slow long trudge for water.

It seemed so strange to me, a city fellow,
That a blunt spoken, solid country man
Should live his life for words,
And put by rugged toil for pen and paper.

But now, more than fifty long years later,
I read his books to learn more of the art
That I part share with him, though in a smaller measure
Than that rich crop of sayings, deeds and legends
That he gleaned from the fields of Ulster,
The back yards of Belfast, the rage in the Derry streets.

If I had known, as we talked beside the fountain
Waiting for the baton to be lifted,
The orchestra to thunder,
That I was chatting to a king of words
Who would one day carve the clay of language
Into a brand new music,
An epiphany of saying,
I would have pinned back hard my teenage ears
And listened to him with a greater care
Than I bestowed on Bruckner,
And would perhaps not have been quite so casual
About things I claimed to know.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 14th. - 23rd. 2017.  

Water Lily (Second Poem).

Girl, hair kept long,
flowing like a river
over the landscape of her body
down to the narrow ankles,
tensed, just like a dancer`s
pirouetting en pointe.

Eyes, equatorial blue with longing,
peering sadly at the grey shore
of her northern island.
Eyes, sad oceans, deep with thwarted love.

I watch her as she walks slowly towards me,
stepping over nets spread on the quay
like an expert sailor. The rucksack on her shoulder
stashed tight with prized possessions.

Love? I have searched for love for half a lifetime,
sailing from island to mainland, from continent to
atolls,
but only finding harbours packed with strangers,
and visitors rarely welcomed.
But this morning our hands touched in the post office
doorway
as we passed each other to and from the counter,
and I knew at once my life had locked into focus,
transformed without a word, a whispered note of
warning.

Girl, my boat is ready, ship shape to sail back southward,
provisions packed below, the sail made new and furled.
The crossing can be tough, icy cold and squally,
but with two to hold the course we should get through.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 13th. 2017. (From a poem started November 20th. 2016).

Happy St. Valentine`s Day everyone.

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.