Andrew Lansdown: Two poems

The Forgetting-Grass Enigma

How did it work,

the rush the ancient

Japanese knew

as “forgetting-grass”?

Did it cause a

rush of forgetting

or just an ebb

of remembering?

Was it added

to salads or soups?

Or dried out for

burning as incense?

Or as a drug

ingested, inhaled?

Or yet twined round

wrists as rough bracelets?

(No, not this last:

for recall-me-nots

worn would soon turn

to forget-me-nots.)

Well, regardless

how it worked, I wish

the ancients had

hoarded some for me.

Andrew Lansdown

Walking to the Waterfall

Meiji no Mori Minō Quasi-National Park,

Osaka Prefecture, Japan

Unbelievable—

this lovely valley livened

by vibrant droning

And straightaway I know it,

this guttural hum,

this deep elongated moan

that stirs a yearning

for the homeland it voices.

And looking between

the towering lamppost trunks

of the cypresses

as the tuneless toneful drone

fades and finishes

I spy by the running stream

a Japanese man

poised to listen to the sound

of streaming water

before blowing again into

his improvised didgeridoo.

Andrew Lansdown