Sketch From A Car Window (New Jersey Highway Dweller) Poem by Imogene Wagner

I man upon a porch in some strange place,
A little square within the earth his own,
A dissipated man with ugly face
Turned wearily upon the passing throng,
Alone beside the teeming thoroughfare
His unmasked eyes cry question of his soul -
Why am I here? ... What am I that I care?

To work and swear for this one day of woe
That flings the rid dust into my eyes,
That strangled joy that all the people go
And I sit here one day each week and stare?
Oh, do these roaring demons never rest?
Does the going quench the restless thirst?
I hear their wind-tossed laughter and their jest

All day, no new beginning or an end,
I see their eyes that touch and see me not
And nowhere is there voice to call me friend -
I am as nothing as the scattered dust,
But that the dust does not resist despair -
The loneliness, oh God, of thousand near -
Why am I here? ... What am I that I care?

(July 1948)