Two Poems

SUBMISSION

The muezzin's recording booms
Allahu akbar, God is Great, and the lights
in the rooms go on and the market lights.

On hands and knees, a woman is praying
in front of her bedroom mirror; others
on the patch of littered grass
between the kiosk and the cinema.

On a damp autumn evening in London
with the rain just holding off
I go on watching, still awed
by that rigid precision that begins

even earlier than prayer - right foot forward
across the threshold, the shoes carried
in the left hand, the hand
for unclean uses, my writing hand.
 
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