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Comment by flippyhead | Hacker News Reader

I like the first one because it's too easy to think someone just fell over instead of having committed suicide.

Thanks for the insight though, interesting to see.

Yeah I didn't interpret it as having committed suicide. But his other poems hinted at him falling asleep at the line. So it could be exhaustion. Or, it could be metaphorical -- that a person's spirit fell to the ground and nobody cared.

Oh man, I'd really have to bend my perception pretty far to interpret this as anything but a reference to suicide, given how many there are among their workers.

People collapse in industrial settings all the time.

But a person jumping from a roof is more similar to a screw falling.

I guess maybe if a person collapsed while working, others might stop working and help. But a suicide jump would be just another thing they can’t intervene in.

I think you have a point. It certainly can be interpreted that way -- as a reference to the suicides of his peers. The more I read the his other poems in the original article the more I'm leaning towards the "suicide" take.

But poetry is always more fun to leave things ambiguous. Original words matter -- the hardest parts is to translate poems precisely, and try not to let your interpretation of its meaning overwhelm the original.

This was my immediate impression as well. But it was influenced by the use of the word plunged in place of fell.

But do you remember the stories of suicide nets at foxconn.. I would say most of the poems are about suicide

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