I don't particularly like the style in which this is written, having a preference for poems that make more literal kinds of sense. Nevertheless, like Wendy I thought that this was about homeless men at a station. "Holes in safety nets" or "cracks" are what they have fallen through, and "petty cash" is the spare change they are asking for as they "buttonhole" passersby. The beards are long because they don't shave, gray because they are old (and possibly have cigarette ashes in them), and the parables are probably about the poor and how they should be treated. The only kind of sense I could make of knit suits was that very cheap "leisure" suits are sometimes made of double-knit. I suspect that the boots are cracked and that "vagary" is describing the men's general manner and suggestive of "vagrant." "Bloomfield" is no doubt a real place, but ironic in contrast to the poem's content.
Susan
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