A Note for my Diary. (Newly Revised).

A book of Chinese poems on my lap
I sit in the church waiting for the clock to strike.

Today is a day for reading.
Yesterday, a day for skyping
Gave me no space to sit alone and think,
To take off my mask in a quiet and lonely corner.

I wasted many hours on the telephone
Failing to organize an on-line meeting,
But I did find time to write a ten line poem,
Which is something - I suppose.

Now I sit alone in this cold suburban church,

A book of Chinese poems on my lap.

I will have to leave when the clock strikes 2 - I`m told -

Time for prayer is strictly regulated.

I am not at prayer now - just simply being alone.

I pretend the clock aint getting on my nerves.

When the doors are locked I shall stroll into the park

And yell Tu Fu at the sulky Autumn skies.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 15th. - 16th. 2020. - October 11th. 2020.

December 5th. 2020. - October 9th. 2022.

(1) Listening to Scriabin.(New Version) (2) The Wrecker.

Listening to Scriabin. (New Version).


Burdened with sound
The air becomes dark, like the depths of the ocean;
Slow waves moving overhead
Interrogate the sun.

The audience sways gently to the swell and fall
Of the Poem of Ecstasy;
A tight packed shoal tugged and rocked by currents
Stronger than instinct.

This, perhaps is what the Dervish looks for
When he spins and whirls in meditation,
Not transcendence, but quietly physical,
This, perhaps, is the death of reason.

Some think it is better not to be born at all,

Not to be separated from the stillness

That hermits seek among the icy mountains:
Some think it is better not to know such music.

Burdened with sound

The air becomes dark, like the depths of the ocean;

The audience sways gently to the swell and fall 

Of the Poem of Ecstasy.


 Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 29th. - 31st. 2020. - September 29th. 2020.
October 12th. 2020.

Developed from a poem sketched 20th. April 2015.

                       *      

             The Wrecker. 


Last night I tossed a stone high in the air,
It has not hit the pond yet,
The surface calm, unruffled,
The moon a perfect picture.

Perhaps if I had skimmed the stone across the stillness,
The ripples would be spreading
Hour upon hour upon hour,
Tearing the picture apart.

If the pond were a crystal plate I would have to smash it,

Smash it to glittering shards,

Moonlight on tremulous water. -

Perfection, for some reason, breaks my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 14th. - 15th. 2020.

September 11th. 2020.

Falling in The Fall
Leaf
        upon leaf
        upon leaf -
The lives of all I have
                          loved
Becoming yesterday -
Becoming next years
                 leaf mould -
Rain scented
          Springtime
                 leaf mould -
Earth from which April
                        Tulips
Shall lift their emptied
                           cups.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 September 11th. - 12th. 2020.      

Dry Web.

I opened the door of the outside toilet
And was flicked in the face by a spiders web.

Perhaps I am the dream food for arachnids,
Dinner - tea - supper for a hundred years;

No more of hunting for migrant insects,
No more of spinning silk through space.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 6th. 2020.

Dharma Naturalist. (Revised)

Reading Gary Snyder -
Or Gary Snyder reading me -
The simplicity of his poem
Daring me to look
At Quail - at Duck - at basalt cliff face
With an innocent eye,
The eye of a one year infant,
Or the eye of a hare in the wheatfield
Peering acutely
Intently
Ecstatic
But not dreaming - nor guessing - nor
                                                thinking
But as though she were simply a camera
                           Focused on all things,
On the landscape as it happens to be.


If I were a true Zen poet,
As Gary Snyder is a true Zen poet,
The snap of a twig underfoot
Would be heard as the young hare hears it
In the yellow depths of the wheat field -
Hot August - cloud dappled - midday.
But I am not a true Zen poet,
And must study every sight I encounter,
Check facts - take notes - then file them
                                       discreetly away.


Meanwhile - out of sight - not hiding, 

The young hare - attentive - observing,
Watching the world she inherits 

Cool - fleet footed - alert.

Watching the fields and the hill sides 

She is absolutely akin to,

Sister to wind and to rain.
Observing the world night and morning

With the curiosity of a naturalist,

But with no reason to allocate names.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
September 3rd. 2020.

Hares hop - jump great distances - run fluently at great speed.I have tried to incorporate the movements of the Hare in the structure of the poem. 

Mill Hill Ridgeway. (Newly Completed Poem).

(The greenest of suburbs are haunted by ghosts)


I love to walk in these fields at midnight,
Feel the earth breathing beneath my feet,
A stressed out mother deep in slumber.

I love to sit still on the south facing slope,
Watch galaxies pulse through magical skies,
A trillion heart beats in the tumult of space.

I love especially the warm June nights
When I can hear wandering foxes cry
Over distances only the fiercest would travel.

This is my dream time, private and holy,
When I can look further than daylight allows,
I sense the depths lost far beneath silence
Where linger the echoes of ancestral voices,

Labourers who gleaned where middle class houses
Now litter lost fields once yellow with corn,
Close by Wilberforce built a plain brick chapel,
A Low Church Parish for hard up farmers.

I love to walk on these hills at midnight
And dream of my forebears struggling for bread.
The slopes overlook where the old farm nestled
Among English elms more graceful than spires.

But the trees are all gone, and the smug little houses
Now huddle together, row upon row
In the valley where horses once whinnied their praise.

Oh I wish I could bulldoze those snide little semis
And restore the valley to tractor and plough.

Meanwhile I walk the last of the green hills,

Down tracks where shadows seem to whisper my name. 

 Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 5th. - 6th. 2018. - September 1st. - 2nd.  -  5th.- 6th. 2020.
Completed October 16th. - 25th.2022.

Listening to You Read. (Revised).

               Listening to You Read

(In Memoriam Anne Sexton and John Lennon).


Listening to you read I become American,
A citizen of that eastern seaboard world
I dearly wanted to move to,
               Wanted to be native of when young;
A citizen who was born and bred mid way
On a ship                         or a slow Dakota.

A citizen                    but never quite at home.

                                          That was before
Three bullets had hit their mark,
Filleting,
                Shredding John`s back
As though it were a curtain of rice paper,
A curtain so thin it was instantly torn apart.

His still beating heart attached to nothing
                                                   sustainable,
Danced out of time in the surgeon`s
                                            delicate fingers
As he tried to fix it to the torn aorta. -
The heart skipped and danced like a small
                             child playing hop scotch,
Skipping from square to square,
                           From moment to moment
Until the world veered crazily out of orbit
And all the numbered squares blurred into one.

From that day on I feigned to hate America,
To hate myself for having loved too well
The Manhattan neighbourhood where Lennon died.
I turned my back on all I had once been,
Erased all dreams of southern California,
Redacted memories of New York City,
And told my friends I had never seen the place.
But then tonight I heard your smoke cracked voice
On a scratchy tape you made in nineteen seventy:
    -  Your poems keen as scalpels  - blunt as bullets.

Anne, listening to you read
          I recovered something I did not want to know,
That I am not a foreigner where the pilgrims landed,
That I was taught to think and write by East Coast poets,
Yourself, young Sylvia Plath, and Robert Lowell.
I have always thought myself an American poet
But a misplaced love of England kept me here in London,

A vibrant town perhaps, but never snug and homely. -

I have often strolled by the Thames on wintry evenings

             Alone and missing the talk of American friends..


 Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 28th. - 29th. - 31st. 2020. - October 13th. 2020.-

November 7th. 2020. - January 24th. - 25th. 2021.  
Born in London, Since my early teens I have had dual nationality. I like being an international person, a "Citizen of Nowhere" as Theresa May once pronounced, but I have deep roots in place and culture. My roots spread thousands of miles. - I thought this poem was going to be written in two parts, but I have only needed to add two lines to complete it.