Rita Dove - Elevator Man, 1949 lyrics

Not a cage but an organ: if he thought about it, he'd go insane. Yes, if he thought about it philosophically, he was a bubble of bad air in a closed system. He sleeps on his feet until the bosses enter from the paths of Research and Administration- the same white cla**mates he had helped through Organic Chemistry. A year ago they got him a transfer from a**embly line to Corporate Headquarters, a "kindness" he repaid by letting out all the stops, jostling them up and down the scale of his bitterness until they emerge, queasy, rubbing the backs of their necks, feeling absolved and somehow in need of a drink. The secret he thinks to himself, is not in the pipe but the slender breath of the piper.