3 poems in Quadrant
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