LEADERSHIP is an ART (MAX DePREE)，勞工詩人許立志

約1993年，某次杜邦公司全球director級主管(約500名)的會議中..，人人研讀一本MAX DePREE著的LEADERSHIP is an ART。我的主管李(Chuck Lee 新加坡人)先生參加完會議之後，此書由我接收。這本書先後有洪建全基金(1991)和經濟新潮社(2008)的譯本《領導的藝術》，當然以後者為佳，舉個例，第1章是很感人的《一個工人之死》，記作者父親約在1928年到該廠的一位工人家去悼念。喪家希望公司的創始人能讀幾首詩.....("竟然"是過世工人的作品......)

在我們的企業生活中(In our efforts to understand corporate life 翻譯有小瑕疵)，我們該從這故事中學習些什麼呢？除了那些財務比率與目標與參數與利潤(botton lines)之外，最重要的是，領導者必須認定"人"的觀念(leaders endorse a concept of persons)......要從了解人的天賦、才幹與技能的多樣性開始。

此文末引一首名詩部份，洪建全基金版略去，經濟新潮社版本譯出，不過還不夠好：

         

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
― Thomas Gray, An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

丁連財‎4599協會(賜福久久)

今年九月三十日在中國廣東深圳富士康職工宿舍跳樓自殺的許立志是一位勞工詩人，他只活了短短二十四年(1990-2014)，但他的詩令人感動流淚：

《我就那样站着入睡》
“I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That”

眼前的纸张微微发黄
The paper before my eyes fades yellow

我用钢笔在上面凿下深浅不一的黑
With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black

里面盛满打工的词汇
Full of working words

车间，流水线，机台，上岗证，加班，薪水……
Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages…

我被它们治得服服贴贴
They’ve trained me to become docile

我不会呐喊，不会反抗
Don’t know how to shout or rebel

不会控诉，不会埋怨
How to complain or denounce

只默默地承受着疲惫
Only how to silently suffer exhaustion

驻足时光之初
When I first set foot in this place

我只盼望每月十号那张灰色的薪资单
I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month

赐我以迟到的安慰
To grant me some belated solace

为此我必须磨去棱角，磨去语言
For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words

拒绝旷工，拒绝病假，拒绝事假
Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons

拒绝迟到，拒绝早退
Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early

流水线旁我站立如铁，双手如飞
By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,

多少白天，多少黑夜
How many days, how many nights

我就那样，站着入睡
Did I – just like that – standing fall asleep?

– 20 August 2011

The haunting poetry of a Chinese factory worker who committed suicide

By Ishaan Tharoor November 12

The haunting poetry of a Chinese factory worker who committed suicide

Xu Lizhi, who worked for the company that produces most of the world's iPhones, committed suicide in September. These are some of his poems.

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

On the last day of September, a 24-year-old migrant worker in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen killed himself. Xu Lizhi jumped out of a window of a residential dormitory run by his employer, Foxconn, the huge electronics manufacturing company with a million-strong workforce that makes the majority of the world's Apple iPhones.

In most cases, Xu's suicide would have been yet another footnote in the vast, sweeping story of China's economic boom and transformation. He is one of a legion of young Chinese migrants who emerge out of rural obscurity to find work in China's teeming cities, only to end up crushed by both the dullness and stress of factory jobs, insufficient wages and a steady accumulation of personal disappointments.

But Xu was a poet. And, after his death, his friends collected his work and got some published in a local Shenzhen newspaper.

The poems, translated at the leftist website Libcom.org, are a wrenching echo of the alienation and hardship felt by countless people in modern China and, for that matter, in other parts of the developing world. They lament the grinding ennui of the assembly line, the squalor of a migrant worker's narrow, frustrated existence.

Xu wrote of his "Rented Room" in 2013: "Every time I open the window or the wicker gate/I seem like a dead man/Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin."

Shenzhen, on the other side of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland, is a sprawling metropolis of 13 million. A few decades ago, it was a sleepy fishing village. Now, a visitor stumbles into a surreal landscape of gleaming skyscrapers, gated communities, and bustling malls. It's a giddy embodiment of China's own rise.

But it takes a toll on those who get swallowed up by it. The London Review Books cites this poem by Xu, which is a play on another verse by the famous Chinese poet Gu Cheng:

We ran along the railway,
arriving in some place called ‘the City’
where we trade in our youth, and our muscle.
Finally we have nothing to trade, only a cough
and a skeleton nobody cares about.
‘Sleepless’

Midnight. Everyone is sleeping soundly,
We keep our pair of young wounds open.
These black eyes, can you really lead us to the light?
‘Night Shift’

According to accounts from his friends, Xu tried multiple times to leave his job at Foxconn. Applications for positions in libraries and book stores in Shenzhen proved unsuccessful. He also was turned down for a job at an internal library within Foxconn's compound. Xu moved away for a spell to be with his girlfriend in the city of Suzhou, but that relationship fell through, and he eventually made his way back to Shenzhen and Foxconn.

His bitterness is clear in a poem penned in December 2013:

I swallowed a moon made of iron
They refer to it as a nail
I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents
Youth stooped at machines die before their time
I swallowed the hustle and the destitution
Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust
I can't swallow any more
All that I've swallowed is now gushing out of my throat
Unfurling on the land of my ancestors
Into a disgraceful poem.

Xu is not the only Foxconn employee to commit suicide: in 2010, a spate of suicides put the international spotlight on the Taiwanese-run company, which is China's biggest private employer. Foxconn has since taken effortsto improve working conditions and dormitories. There have been 18 attempted suicides of Foxconn employees in the past five years.

"We are saddened by the loss of a young man who was both an employee and a talented poet,” Foxconn said in a statement, cited by the Wall Street Journal. It says it has offered assistance to his family and that there was a 24-hour hotline, staffed by counselors who could have helped the troubled man.

"No matter how hard we try, nobody can eliminate this kind of tragic incidents," the statement reads.

The last poem Xu penned, perhaps even on the day he killed himself, signals his decision.

I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light
But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world
Everyone who’s heard of me
Shouldn’t be surprised at my leaving
Even less should you sigh or grieve
I was fine when I came, and fine when I left.

A distraught friend and fellow Foxconn employee also wrote a poem. "Another screw comes loose/Another migrant worker brother jumps," Zhou Qizao writes, a day after Xu's death. The poem ends: "A white-haired father, holding the black urn with your ashes, stumbles home."

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.