Five poems in Quadrant

March 2023 issue of Quadrant contains five poems by Andrew. They are: “Getting Light”, “Hole”, “Pictures of Plants”, “The Calming Clams”, and “Locations of Red”. “Pictures of Plants” is a gunsaku, a set of six haiku on (as the set title indicates) the subject of plants.

“Holes” was written after a visit to a small graveyard in Kyoto, Japan, where women had left offerings before an idol of Jizo, a Buddhist Bodhisattva to whom women appeal to save their deceased children from a hell-like place called Sai no Kawar. The poem is reproduced below.

Holes

Japan: Jizō Bosatsu, guardian of the souls
of miscarried, aborted and stillborn children (mizuko)

A persimmon
left as an offering to
Jizo Bosatsu
has been holed by birds, just like
a mother’s heart, holed by grief.

Also without
a centre, a five-yen coin
offered to Jizo
by a mother aching to save
her mizuko from limbo.

© Andrew Lansdown