14 JANUARY 1989, Page 34

Park Avenue, 8.30 am

The girls who walk my New York street With fancy sneakers on their feet Will rarely talk or smile or blink And sometimes hardly seem to think: They stride to work for twenty blocks Absorbed in cases, bonds or stocks, Follow the pavement's concrete seam Like female gymnasts on a beam, There are a thousand ways to tread But only one that leads ahead Till scarlet street-lights make them stop To watch the signals of some cop, Then move in herds beneath his hand Discreetly wired to head-phone land.

Larry Dugan