Easter Tuesday 2020. Transformations. (Revised)

                     1.                                   My Garden.

My garden is my chapel
The Ark that keeps me safe

Here I can sit and think
Far from the tear stained streets

Here I can meditate
Among the Easter flowers

The tulips in my garden
Are sun filled cups of praise

                     2.                                  Garden Thoughts.

Where we were born is lost to us
Where we are we have to be

We are not the names that were given us
We are the names we choose to love

We are not the truths that we were taught
We are the Truth that quietly claimed us

We are not the words once said in haste
We are the wise words not yet spoken

We are not our parents wayward children
We are who life has let us be

Thoughts spin their webs deep in my mind
There is no way I can control them

Resurrection lays bare the skull of Golgotha
Cracked open by the weight of The Cross

We once mocked God - our hostage to reason
Now God is seen in everything

                      3.                                             Contemplation.

I sit on the white stone window ledge
Listening to a far off Dove

Perhaps the Dove sings on a branch
Fragrant with abundant blossom

The tulips in my London garden
Are sun filled chalices of praise


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 14th. - 15th. - 18th. 2020.

Maundy Thursday in my Garden.

Glowing in the April sun
Yellow and red cups of light,
Communion cups raised to the sky,
Cups innocent of the Blood of Christ.

I sit on the wide ledge of the window
Watching the tulips nod in the breeze
That lightly shakes them without malice,
Shakes them but does not break or shred them,

Beauty shredded into earth.

I sit on the wide ledge of the window
Listening to an uncanny silence
I have never experienced before in London,
The silence of multitudes holding their breath.

Today, it seems, is Maundy Thursday,
The day Jesus established the Eucharist,
The day, in church, we kneel and wait
As the candles burn low and the icons are covered,

Covered in grave cloths purple with grief.

But today the churches are closed and shuttered
Because of the plague that shadows the world;
And because I must now dwell in isolation
My garden has become a sacred chapel.

I sit on the wide ledge of the window
Enthralled by the shimmering sunlit tulips,
Deep cups balanced on tall slim stems
Rising straight from the tomb cold earth,

Communion cups waiting to be filled with wine
In the clear dawn glow of the resurrection.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 8th. 2020.
This poem can be read with Easter Tuesday Morning 2020..

Trevor J Potter's Art: Crescent Moon in March. (New Version)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Crescent Moon in March. (New Version): Weeping into the hollow shell of my violin I remember the last time we were together And try to fill my lonely hours with music. The he...

Spring Flowers in a Time of Plague.

Nothing I can do is powerful enough.
Nothing I can say is true enough.
All I can do is sit still and wait
In the modest sanctuary that is my home.

If I were a doctor I could help the sick.
If I were a priest I could calm the anguished.
All I can do is tend my flowers
In the walled plot that is my garden.

To save lives we must stay home and watch
The world grow quiet as the days grow long.
War is less frightening than this pandemic,
In war the enemy is clearly in sight.

I quietly tend the flowers in my garden.
Such beauty almost breaks my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
6th. April 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Dead Infantas. Part One. The Dead Infantas Par...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Dead Infantas. Part One. The Dead Infantas Par...:                The Dead Infantas. It is a time of ruined cities, Of silent streets haunted by lone foxes. Of palace gardens wrecked by ...

The Dead Infantas. Parts One & Two & Coda..A Dark Fairytale for our Times. (Completed Poem).

              
                    Part One.
           The Dead Infantas.


It is a time of ruined cities,
Of silent streets haunted by lone foxes.
Of palace gardens wrecked by hail and frost
Under the mournful gaze of dead Infantas.
It is a time of pestilence and ransacked churches;
Thieves smashing doors to steal the sacraments.

Rotting daffodils hang their tattered flags
Over a moss green mere of tangled leaves. -
In another corner of the palace gardens
Purple tulips, shaped like communion cups,
Raise scented prayers up to the soft blue sky.
The communion cups are lacking wine and water,
The snow grey clouds that cross from time to time
The moist eye of the April sun,
Dapple the empty bowls with icy shadows.
Bees and moths die when they touch these shadows.

The souls of the dead Infantas float unseen
Between the corpses of the winter flowers
That slowly turn to mush as days grow long.
When they were flesh and blood these sad princesses
Never learned to look beyond the giant mirrors
That iced their palace walls.
Their whole world seemed to be a burnished surface
That reflected nothing but their inbred faces,
Their painted lips, their haunted mermaid eyes.

The communion cups are magicked into bells
That chime ethereal warnings of unease
As the restless souls of the dead Infantas glide
Between the moss green leaves.
They all died childless, the mirrored walls impassive
To the sobs and shrieks of inconsolable women
Crying out to glimpse the Son behind thick veils.
But remorseless shadows rose high like the tides.
Rose like spring tides pounding empty beaches
While the priests and servers murmured Nunc Dimittis.

Once the cooling bodies had been anointed.
Once the final prayers were softly spoken,
The cramped souls of the dead Infantas fled
Out of the sickroom, into the fields and gardens,
That protocol had barred them from exploring
During their sheltered lives.
"This is heaven", they whispered to themselves.
But as they touched the plants, and stared, and wondered,
The green leaves changed to brown, the blossoms tumbled.

Rotting daffodils hang their tattered flags
Over a moss green mere of tangled leaves.

                             *

                     Part Two.
             Sleeping Beauties.


The dead Infantas glide on silent wings
That gently lift their spirit bodies
Like webs of blown silk
Upon the misty breath of April winds.

Their flimsy wings catch on the twisted thorns
Of ancient briar roses
That in summer will be weighted down with blossoms
Darker than the darkest ruby wine.

Caught on the thorns the dead Infantas weave
Ghost cocoons with their saddest memories
That slowly fade as they rock themselves to sleep.
Slowly fade like delicate pencil sketches.

And what do they dream,
If they have the power to dream
In the heavy scents of the shady palace gardens?
The gardens they never walked when they were children.

Do they dream of pampered lives bereft of meaning
Trapped by protocol and artifice?
Do they dream of food banks, junkies and rough sleepers,
So often reviled on the palace intranet?

I suspect if they dream at all in their realm of shadow,
Its of billionaire princes on Lippizaner horses
Who will one night bludgeon a path through the maze of thorns
To wake them with a kiss.
                             
                             *

                         Coda.

The Dead Infantas do not dream,
No folk are left to grieve in their crumbling palaces,
To dig the graves, to light the pyres and ovens,
To shovel ashes over silent fields.
The Dead Infantas have passed into a darkness
Darker that the furthest tracts of space.

Centuries under earth their bodies rot,
The gardens they once loved are now wild forests
Roamed by creatures they could never name,
Wise denizens of a verdant paradise,
A brand new Eden red in tooth and claw
Incubated in the world wide great extinction.

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief
Have all rotted into mush and ashes,
Even their ghosts have vanished from the forests
That now entwine their frivolous civilisation.
All that the Dead Infantas understood
Has self annihilated, transfigured into dust.

The billionaires, the oil men, the presidents and kings
Have killed the world they made, and every human in it.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
27th. - 28th. - 30th. March 2020, Part One.
1st. - 4th.April 2020. Part Two.
3rd. June 2020. Coda. 

The only way I could react at first  to self isolation during the covid19 pandemic has been to respond to the surreal and dangerous situation by digging deep into the fiercely dark fairy tale legends that I read in my childhood and have haunted my imagination ever since.

My China House. (Revised).

On my kitchen shelf I keep a china house.
A cream-white house with a yellow roof,
and pale green vines flat on the wall.
The front door is pink, the windows pale blue,
the shutters a paler pink than the door.
Tiny red grapes hang from the vine,
and have flourished there one hundred years,
never to be picked and crushed into wine;
never to be thieved by whispering children.
The door cannot open. The windows are blank.
It seems only secrets can dwell in this house,
my cream-white house with no ceilings, no floors,
no lounges, no bedrooms, no rickety stairs,
no bath to relax in for long hot hours.
This house may seem useless, a box that is empty,
but it is there, when a child, I stored hopes and dreams.
I tossed my wild dreams up into the air
and watched them float down the porcelain chimney.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
26th. - 30th.  March 2020.