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.