Agency Building #4
Through a camera we see an orange corridor,
its long ceiling reflected in the floor,
both diminishing into the distance
like the throat of an open mouth, a huge maw
all tiger-bright, lit by long rows of
round bulbs, each one like a marrow-pounded
tooth. Everything on this level blazes,
even hisses: there's no airy coolness to
those escalator pods, flame-blue, rising
from the basement's lairs: and down there, hot
parking lots for thousands of employees.
They arrive each weekday at 9, placing trust
in those innocent words of William Blake:
"if all do their duty, they need not fear harm."
But here in this hallway—such fearful symmetry.
