Sylvia. (Revised).

So this is where it happened,
In the rooms above this blue plaque,
Behind locked doors
On a freezing winter morning.
Here where the policeman stood,
The pressmen took their photos,
The neighbours talked,
A poet is remembered,
My teacher and my friend.

You are part of who we are now,
Lodged in our DNA,
In books and grubby mortar,
The crowded Underground,
The streets we hustle out of
To get from A to B.
You are part of the air we breathe in,
Just like Keats and Shakespeare,
Milton, Yeats and Shelley,
A sweet American girl
Cut down by raging sorrow,
Your cry not just an echo,
But etched into the marrow,
The solid London clay,
The back bone of our history.

I hear you in these wet streets,
In Regent`s Park, in Chalcot Square,
At noon on Primrose Hill.
Your voice is never silent,
But shivers through the small woods,
The tight North London suburbs,
The scrum in Camden Market,
The heights of Hampstead Heath.
A voice that cuts straight into
The hallowed euphemisms
We construct to section grief.

Today in Fitzroy Road
I stand staring at your window
Just like a three day tourist
With one less box to tick.
I recall my teenage self
Sat awkwardly at your table,
Your Biro in my right hand,
A thesaurus at my elbow,
But unable to write one word.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 31st. - November 11th. 2017.