I like this poem.

Fiction 

Howard Nemerov

The people in the elevator all

Face front, they all keep still, they all

Look up with the rapt and stupid look of saints

In paintings at the numbers that light up

By turn and turn to tell them where they are.

They are doing the dance, they are playing the game.

To get here they have gone by avenue

And street, by ordinate and abscissa, and now

By this new coordinate, up. They are three-

dimensional characters, taken from real life;

They have their fates, whether to rise or fall,

And when their numbers come up they get out.