Trevor J Potter's Art: Guernica Tapestry. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Guernica Tapestry. (Revised).: Bulls run amok through the lanes  Destroying shop fronts, door frames, fences In a cascade of implacable terror. Lights flash on and off in ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Betrayals and Redemption. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Betrayals and Redemption. (Revised).: Infidelity creates poetry,                but don`t try it. Love that is certain overcomes pain and treachery But innocence is kinder, les...

Guernica Tapestry. (Completed).

Bulls run amok through the lanes 

Destroying shop fronts, door frames, fences

In a cascade of implacable terror.

Lights flash on and off in all the houses

Until the rooftops shear off in flames.

Opened hands imploring skywards,

Stretch high as if to catch the bombs

That drench the town in molten tears.

A felled horse screams, her backbone severed.

A woman clasps a dying infant,

Her wild eyes fixed on yesterday,

Tomorrow cancelled, the clocks all melted,

Time dissolved as morning implodes.

Invincible in their sleek new bombers,

Airmen usurp the irascible gods

Who once ruled Europe in thunder and earthquake.

Even the chariot that carried the sun

Has spiraled to earth, impelled by their powers.

The deified airmen soar like Condors

On wings that glitter in the morning light.

The woman cradling the dying infant

Half blind watches the aircraft depart.

It made no sense that such elegant aircraft

Were manufactured simply to slaughter;

She had dreamt such beauty could only be good,

But now it was real it had killed her world.

She sees the hurt horse writhing and kicking.

She lets out a cry that echoes and echoes.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

August 4th. - 6th. - 16th. 2021.

I saw the tapestry version of Guernica in the Whitechapel Art Gallery when it was shown there in April 2010. The images terrified me. The aircraft are not represented in the picture but the people on the ground during the attack could see them clearly because thet were flying quite low. In some ways rocket attacks are more terrifying due to the very short warnings that the people in the target areas get. But what a terrible waste of engineering skills these rockets are!

Three Lotus Blooms - Three Poems. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Minowa, Kanasugi at Mikawashima,

                           1.

Fan shaped wing spread wide,

A heron with her neck arched back

Dives towards the blue wave.

                           2.

Could life be this simple again?

A distant village of paper houses

Sleeps by the waters edge.

No gas, no electricity, no speeding cars

Burning up the tarmac in the evening light.

No radios blaring jazz from upstairs

                                                     windows.

No American English spoken.

Could life be so calm - so quiet again?

The only sounds the evening songs of birds

Intermingled with occasional conversations

As people meet to watch the stars come out.

Half lost in shadow, a solitary man is strolling

Close to the shore, keeping his thoughts to

                                                      himself.

A wading heron calls out in sudden alarm.

                           3.

The hunting heron dives from a red sky.

A single blurred cloud of early autumn

Shadows the warm waters.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

1st. - 17th. -19th. August 2021.

Poem No. 8, Month of August, from illustrations on my 2021 Calendar by Hiroshige.

I have been studying this print every day throughout August and every day I find some new detail. So I now have three interconnected poems not just the single Haiku type poem that I began with on the first of the month. The Three Lotus Blooms refer to three meditations. 

View of Kajikoyama, Inaba Province.

A poem is a painting in embryo.

I sketch black or grey lines on white paper

As witness to scenarios in my head,

A quilted landscape of interweaved colours

That would dazzle any sleepers, old or infant,

Trying to get some sorely needed rest.

No paintbox can provide paints bright enough

When a clear account needs to be provided

Of scenes drifting by my inner eye,

Or what I witness when I`m wide awake

And staring glum out of the back room window

At rain zipping through the July gardens,

Tearing blooms to shreds.

So I must revert to words scratched on cheap paper

To try and get my thoughts into your head

Because my paint brush cannot work the trick

To show you what I mean.

I thought at first the picture on my calendar

Lacked clear focus, lacked any depth or truth,

Yet this print by Hiroshige is so dream like

It seems to me he mastered a technique

To paint with inks the world transgressed by visions

To make it magical.

For some reason trees are flowering in July,

Maytime translated to the height of summer.

The turquoise bay, ice still, no white waves curling,

Recalls a mirror reflecting only sky.

The islands are stone ships that travel nowhere.

The pink and yellow houses look like boxes

Stacked in line below the opulent hill,

And not a single person walks the green land.

If I could paint one scene like Hiroshige,

Emulate his timelessness and space,

I would burn every word that I have written

On my backyard bonfire of the vanities

And set to making prints.

My thoughts would then connect straight with your thoughts,

Drifted to you on a raft of colours.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

31st. July 2021.

Poem No. 7 month of July, Hiroshige series of illustrations on my 2021 calendar.

By the Local Post Box. (Revised).

Meeting an ex pupil of mine after nearly 26 years, 

Then a child struggling with Album fur die Jugend,

Now a young woman, coolly walking her dachshund,

Schumann off her mind, husband at home fixing something,

But still the same voice,

Still the same awkward mannerisms,

Still the same keeping her distance

As though, once being her teacher, my pedestal remained

                                                                            unbroken,

A marble plinth too high for her to climb.

But still the questioning eyes,

Still the openness that was not really open,

Still the same quiet respect, the almost filial love

That left me strangely scared, exposed to ridicule

Because I feared I knew less than she thought, and that others

                                                              should have taught her.

She mentioned she has a daughter

Who cant keep away from the keyboard.

I had to admit I can no longer teach piano,

My fingers have lost dexterity, I can no longer stretch them wide.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

July 24th. - 28th. 2021. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: From My Bedroom Window. (Revised Last Stanza.).

Trevor J Potter's Art: From My Bedroom Window. (Revised Last Stanza.).: A girl in a white shift hurries down the hill. An urban fox scurries in the opposite direction. A chill electric moon, blue becoming yellow,...