For the Brown Ones

Let this, then, be my object of obsession
My indiscreet fetish
My own Privy Counsel
My recurrent peccadillo:

Lay out neatly the leather
For the naked workers
To skilfully put together
By a patched beaming moon;

And trim and thimble-stitch their clothes,
Lit by eyesight and attentive candle,
In return for the grace
Of a mid-life insight:

To do the deeds done
For those who can never repay them
And to admit the singing of the rule:
The rule of the love of the doing.

Dominic Mathews

*****

A London Song

Walk with me out of the grim-suited city,
Waltz with me down on the strand,
And we’ll turn and we’ll laugh
By the soft-turning water
Scuffing our heels in the sand,
In the sand,
In the sand,
Scuffing our heels in the sand.

Turning again to the fiddle of being,
Turning again with the tide,
Forgetting the world
In returning to earth
With our eyes and our arms open wide,
Open wide,
Open wide,
With our eyes and our arms open wide.

Dominic Mathews

*****