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An Ode to the Loud Colleague

Hunched down, bent to fit the shape of the cube,
downtrodden, hating our lives, we sludge through the day,
Till on haunting work orders we carry on another day
and towards the distant weekend we toil.
Roger works asleep, many had lost their motivation
but carried on, numb. All went lame;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the sounds
Of disappointed rings of the phone across the aisle.

Ring! Ring! Quick boys!—- an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy earbuds just in time;
But someone still was plugging their ears and crying
and floundering like a man in fire or lime.—
Loud, through the roar of huhuhuhu and references to the navy
as under an air raid siren, i see him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plugs his ears, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering office you too could work
Behind the cube that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging ears, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted ears,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores in my ears,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To new associates ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro reyrey mori.

Adapted from Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est