Elegy For An Ad Department Poem by Richard Cole

When they finally called us, we were nothing
if not relieved, even giddy to report upstairs
on a cold day in December, a Friday just before lunch—
the witching hour of the week for layoffs.

For two years, our jobs had felt like a car crash
in extreme slow motion, the body skidding undeniably
out of control but slowly and slow enough to argue
and deny, to dream a little as the road signs crept
for days past our windows, slow enough to get out and walk,
and why not? The doors were always unlocked.
And all the while our little sedan
was careening toward a final, increasingly obvious
collision with commercial reality.

We stepped out onto the executive wing,
all padded carpet and mahogany, with dark green ficus
and palm trees tended, I knew, by silent workers
who moved through the building on weekends,
watering and snipping the brown tips.
They sent us to the master boardroom—
dark paneling, a teakwood table, plush drapes
and a marble credenza overloaded with a chorus line
of expensively manicured bonsai.
Our salaries compete for this, I thought,
and I counted the room: from fifty-five, now seventeen of us
left. We assumed our places, and Olga, our last, best secretary,
sat down beside me in a wing-backed chair,
all five feet two inches of her almost lost in the soft
Italian leather, swinging her legs, quiet, grim.

At 11: 50 sharp, our manager John arrived
with four strange men in dark suits from Human Resources.
'Christ, ' I thought. 'Does it take this many
to kill us? ' Last month they’d laid off Peter, the man
who 20 years ago had built this department, a brilliant–
and that is the word–corporate designer.
Then last week, John called us together to tell us
he could tell us nothing, that his own superior
was growing testy, that he felt, he said, 'naked in the wind,
dodging traffic.' So none of us were surprised
when he miserably cleared his throat
and began talking of the costs of doing business.
One of the suits interrupted and told us to remember
we hadn't made a profit in 18 months (this,
after 18 years in the black) , and yes, we’ll remember.
We should have worked harder, smarter.
But we'll also remember the hubris and pig greed
of the men who rode this company down
through a swarm of screaming bodies and shimmering
gold parachutes. And let it be remembered
as well that in our minor niche of creating flyers
that wound up usually in somebody's trash,
we did our job, I'd like to think, as professionals,
though at that moment we were only children,
very small, listening as our parents told us
we would have to leave home forever.

This would be Frank's third termination,
who had worked late each day correcting the copy,
including my own, and the third for Bob who was 54,
and the second for Marie, with two sons
entering college and a husband last year
laid off as well. They sat frozen, their faces
as if carved. And I who, incredibly,
had always felt above these people, the closest
I had to friends, simply because of the poetry
I hid in my desk, I turned away, and I remember
staring out across the frozen city at a single, rising balloon
far off, red, gaining slowly over the office buildings.
And as John told us, his voice collapsing, that our business
had failed, and as Olga cried without shame,
I followed the balloon as it wobbled and soared until
finally in the gray, forgiving sky, it slipped
and disappeared.