This is the Bowery of 1938 • Herbert Woodward Martin

This is a collection of triplets, three men framed in the
doorway of a closed department store. In the windows there
are three ceiling lamps hung with light from another century.
For the sake of time these men are not friends,
nor neighbors, otherwise why call them triplets?
They are blessed to be dressed alike: three caps, shirts and
trousers and three sets of shoes, not hand-me-downs,
not terribly worn, so, they must retain some warmth.
Their trousers are unable to brace or restrain the troubling wind.
They keep their heads bowed in the presence of circumstance.

Copyright Lucy Ashjian Estate
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Herbert Woodward Martin is a prize-winning 
poet and performer, an actor and playwright, 
a singer and opera librettist, a professor, 
and a scholar. He has published four 
volumes of poetry and his work has 
appeared in various anthologies. Martin 
is also an accomplished actor and director. 
His main research interest has been Paul 
Laurence Dunbar a late-nineteenth century 
African American poet.