Life Insurance

Jaco Fouche

I've come to finish some of the work
I don't seem to get round to during the day.
So many people
Insist on drawn-out pleasantries and eye-catching smiles.
More than they do on the urgent ledger or the informative note.
Personally, I prefer the obscure paper scheme and the blank demanding screen
To the inquiries of chatterboxes and the well-related social lives of kindly clerks.

But it's hard to sit down to the long administrative haul,
I'm very aware of the great space around me,
The open-plan office partitioned (like a kraal),
And to one side the drop into the atrium.
Has anybody ever made the journey into that abyss?
Has the Imp of the Perverse convinced no one of the marvellous flight
Awaiting the incidental dropper all the way to the concrete water features below?

I must gather my thoughts.
Instead of sitting down and digging in, I think of flight.
Instead of life insurance, I think of suicide.

The overheads flicker and die.
Delighted at the distraction, I phone a certain number.
Hello, I'm working late. I'm at such and such a desk on the third floor.
I'll be here a while longer. Could you light up the area once more?

There, I've talked to someone.
Now back to work.
Let me see, let me see if I get this.
If at thirty-four the client invests so much,
And then at fifty-five he frees -
But what's that? A remote radio? The faintest song?
Somebody else must have come along,
To sit down on another floor.

There are no voices,
No ringing phones,
No feet,
Even the soft daily sough of the air conditioning
Is gone.
There's only the hum of office equipment,
And the music like dust on the ear.

The hour seems to have gone to sleep.
I do not investigate the song.
Let it play like a sound track.
To quiet, warming life
And to related labour.

LitNet: 18 March 2005

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