Andrew Lansdown: Five Poems

On the Composition of Haiku

 

i

The haiku master—

labouring past the moment

to seize the moment.

 

ii

Counting syllables—

the ancient haijin did not

count it beneath them.

 

iii

Attempting to touch

in seventeen syllables

a small thing as such.

 

Andrew Lansdown

 

 

 

 

Ukiyo-e Kawaii

 

Plainly sparrows will

fluff up for warmth while perching at

nightfall or snowfall—

but who can explain the plumpness

of the ones winging

among stylised bamboos in those

woodblocks by the ancient masters?

 

Andrew Lansdown

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Poetry

 

1

On Poetry and Photography

 

Poems, like photographs,

can check the covetousness

that attractive things

engender in human hearts—

the craving to catch and keep.

 

2

On Imagist Poetry

 

Precise imagery,

plausible and original,

is strangely moving:

who can define or dare dismiss

the emotion of exquisite?

 

3

On Japanese Poetry

 

Hard to tell, at times,

if the loneliness imbuing

old Japanese poems

arises from the loss of love

or, inversely, the love of loss.

Andrew Lansdown

 

 

 

Cane   

 

Well, for the blind,

bamboo, the colour green just

doesn’t feel white!

Andrew Lansdown

 

 

Kyoto Maple Conceits

Pretending menace

while riding the current down

the disused canal—

a fleet of little fireboats

set adrift by the maples.

 

ii

With pinking scissors

and crimson dye, maples make

pretty autumn kites—

but they are mostly flightless,

being bobtailed and stringless.

 

iii

Maple hatcheries

are releasing the first of

their coral starfish:

see them afloat or sunken

in stream, pond and stone basin.

 

iv

Around Kyoto’s

Buddhist temples the maples

are imitating

protesting Tibetan monks

with acts of self-immolation.

 

v

Possibly they feel

they are embodiments of

Jizo Bosatsu—

that may be why the maples

adorn themselves with red bibs.

 

vi

A geisha going

among the blushing maples:

they curtsy to her

and cast as she approaches

ruby pendants and brooches.

 

vii

An eruption

of maples on the summit …

and later on

molten lava flowing down

where the stream used to plummet.

 

viii

They didn’t aspire

to be autumn’s deputies,

and yet the maples

are reluctant to surrender

their rusty stars to winter.

Andrew Lansdown