Once I wandered, weak and weary,
Through the screens that glimmered dreary,
Through the code of years forgotten,
Through the systems none adored;
Forty winters, brightly burning,
Forty summers, still returning,
And the wheels of labour turning—
Turning, turning, evermore.
Twice the hand of Fate dismissed me,
Twice the cold world ceased to list me,
Once six weeks before it kissed me
With another office door;
Then six months of applications,
Silence, doubt and calculations,
Till I crawled through desperation
Back unto the treadmill floor.
Now at sixty, bent and blinking,
In a chair of endless thinking,
I am chained to ancient logic
Written decades gone before;
Patching functions, tracing errors,
Waking long-forgotten terrors,
While the glowing monitor mirrors
All the years I can’t restore.
Like a prisoner picking oakum,
Strand by strand I split and soak ’em;
Every ticket, every broken
Piece of code becomes one more.
Someone else incurred the lending,
Someone else postponed the mending,
Yet it falls to me, unending—
Technical debt forevermore.
And at home the air grows brittle,
Every word must weigh a little;
Even laughter, once so simple,
Finds no easy open door.
She is weary, I am weary,
Rooms once warm have grown more dreary,
Two souls walking, tired and leery,
Past each other on the floor.
Then one midnight came a tapping—
Not a raven, wing-flap flapping,
But a thought within me rapping,
Softly at my chamber door:
“Must you work until you’re broken?
Must the bargain go unspoken?
Must your life remain a token
Paid to employers evermore?”
“Surely,” said I, “I must labour.
Mortgage, bills and every favour;
Safety is the only saviour—
Work, and earn, and ask no more.”
But the tapping grew much stronger:
“You have served them long—and longer.
Are you richer? Are you stronger?
What, exactly, is this for?
“Count not salary, but needing.
Count the mouths and bills requiring.
Find the sum that keeps life feeding—
Nothing less, and nothing more.
“Name the number. Mark the year then.
Make the distant ending near then.
Give yourself a path made clear then—
Set an exit from the door.
“You need not climb another ladder,
Win another title, sadder;
You need not make your CV grander—
You have proved yourself before.
“Work four days, or three, or fewer.
Take a role that leaves you newer.
Trade the grand career illusion
For the life you hunger for.
“Let the ancient code keep breaking.
Let the corporate earth keep quaking.
Do your work without mistaking
Their emergency for yours.
“Document and raise the warning.
Leave on time each blessed evening.
Keep some strength for Saturday morning.
Keep some spirit in your core.”
Then I saw, beyond the glowing
Of the screens forever showing,
There were roads I might be going
That I’d scarcely seen before:
Not retirement as surrender,
But a life grown smaller, kinder;
Less a worker, more a wanderer—
More a husband than a chore.
Maybe mornings without meetings.
Maybe slower, gentler greetings.
Maybe jokes met not with freezing.
Maybe laughter as before.
Maybe income somewhat thinner,
Yet the days immeasurably richer;
Maybe time becomes the victor
Over status, fear and score.
So I turned unto my raven—
That dark thought which sought a haven—
And I asked it, almost craven:
“Can I really leave this shore?”
Quoth the Raven:
“Find your Enough.
Then—nevermore.”
