Their eyes met through the window pane
one flesh-and-blood, one plastic,
on a night of driving rain
amid Christmas light-fantastic.
She was haughty, still and cold,
he was old and full of gin,
on a street that was not paved with gold —
the vagrant and the mannequin.

She gazed with an indifferent stare
into the bleak, cold night
and above her stiffly-coiffured hair,
frozen in mid-flight,
were golden cherubs on wreaths of green
and glitter balls in stately spin
and a loaded silence hung between
the vagrant and the mannequin.

Her beauty cut him to the quick —
like his ex-wife in disguise,
the golden cherubs made him sick
in their plastic paradise,
like a mockery of happier days,
or like a prize he could not win
and tears clouded his steady gaze
as the vagrant looked on the mannequin.