The Company

Sigman Byrd

We believed in the company as permanent gravity, 

 as sacrament（圣礼）, and got the job done. 

 We were given the memo about getting it done. 

 But then the company changed hands. 

 Another, more profitable company 

 hoisted up a sign and told us 

 the product line "needed adjusting." 

 We were told. 

 And the company, like a beneficent scrim 

 of blackened sky, pure space --

 we looked up into it after a hard day, 

 everything in it glowing and turning, 

 a spray of light patterned into 

 an elastic, expansive aura we began 

 to envision as living. 

We listened to the forklifts（铲车，升降机） whir 

 through the company, delivering things, 

 sending things away. 

 It sounded like a cube of restless ocean 

 under a coil of glistening weather. 

 It breathed like who we were 

 when we donned our protective suits 

 and flashed our data cards. Good morning, we said 

 and imagined the company's flinty（坚硬的）, flexible shell 

 resembled something deep inside us. 

 We believed in our work 

 as sympathetic blueprint, as touchable. 

 We were alive. We had forgotten we were alive. 

 We believed the company was 

 the one thing we could believe in.