Three of Andrew’s poems have been published in the March 2015 issue of Quadrant. They are “Water for Worship”, “Petals Scattering” and “The Man with the Gun”. The poem “Water for Worship” is a choka (a traditional Japanese poetic form involving alternating lines of 5 and 7 syllables and concluding on two lines of 7 syllables each) and was written after a stay in Osaka, Japan:

 

Water for Worship

Osaka, Japan

 

At Hozen Temple

a stooped Japanese man is

working the handle

of a cast iron pump, which is

spouting water to

a plastic bucket in which

it will be carried,

sloshing, ten paces then poured

in a granite pot

from which it will be scooped with

a tin-cupped ladle

and tossed over a life-size

statue of Fudo,

the god of fire and wisdom,

covered now in moss

sustained by countless dousings

across the decades

from hopeful petitioners

like this very man

who is puffing while pumping

water for worship

as I write where I began

this poem at Hozen Temple.

               © Andrew Lansdown