| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | On a Window Display in a Western City | | By William Rose Benét |
| | | HE changed the card, and pointed, and he twirled himself around | |
| To show the sack suit’s jaunty cut, “a twenty-dollar treat.” | |
| Behind the wide show-window’s glass he ogled, strutted, frowned, | |
| Disposed his collar, shot his cuffs, and twinkled, head to feet. | |
| I stood amid the gaping crowd and watched him from the street. | 5 |
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| That vest-adjusting marionette, that little lacquered slave | |
| In serge and tweed without a crease, disported, deft and droll, | |
| To coax our custom. Left and right he postured, pert or grave. | |
| He arched his chest; he tried to smoothe—what creases from his soul? | |
| I wondered if his underwear was one great thread-webbed hole! | 10 |
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| A subtle pathos reached from him, for all his flashy strut, | |
| We all would fain usurp the stage. ’Twas his heroic dream, | |
| But warped by shrewd necessity; a climbing from the rut, | |
| Like some bedraggled butterfly that crawls from grime to gleam, | |
| However evanescent, where the public dump-heaps steam. | 15 |
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| Tin cans and broken bottles often flash a diamond ray! | |
| A little sun will dry the mire on wings that missed their mark! | |
| I wondered whither went his bright-shod feet at end of day. | |
| Did drink or drugs devour his soul? Perhaps in mornings dark | |
| He crawled to some damp bench and stretched ’neath papers in the park. | 20 |
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| Such thoughts contribute saving grace. Believe them? Lord, I must! | |
| If voluntary choice were—this!—it turns the stomach, quite,— | |
| Where once these streets were open range, horned cattle stamped the dust, | |
| And, bronzed and brown, unknown to town’s insane electric light, | |
| Beneath the deep blue, star-pricked skies men rode the herd by night! | 25 | | | |
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