Laughing, and Mopping Up

Today's poem is "Afterwards", by U A Fanthorpe, about an audience watching Shakespeare's Richard III, with the actors swaggering about and the audience then leaving, before the real characters come in:

And in they come, rolling up their sleeves,
With hoovers and mops, buckets and brushes and Brasso,
Making it ready for the next time, nobody watching,
With small uncompetitive jokes, with backchat
About coach-trips, soaps, old men,
And a great sloshing of water.

This is where we ought to be. Not
Up on the stage with the rich and the Richards,
Rehearsing already their entrance for the next house,
The precise strut that registers power,

But down on our hands and knees,
Laughing, and mopping up.

This goes so well with my sermon for Sunday, about proud Naaman and the swaggering, rich kings, contrasted with the small, abducted servant girl - wish it were in Portuguese...

Couldn't get a cleaning lady (except for myself), but got this elderly man cultivating his plot down by the irrigation channel - humbly doing the most crucial job of all - producing food, without which none of us could do anything we do.