I Have Discovered That My Freedom Is

Every Morning I Woke In Dread, Waiting For The Day Nurse To Go On Her Rounds And Announce From The List Of Names In Her Hand Whether Or Not I Was For Shock Treatment, The New And Fashionable Means Of Quieting People And Of Making Them Realize That Orders Are To Be Obeyed And Floors Are To Be Polished Without Anyone Protesting And Faces Are To Be Made To Be Fixed Into Smiles And Weeping Is A Crime.

Conversation Is The Wall We Build Between Ourselves And Other People, Too Often With Tired Words Like Used And Broken Bottles Which, Catching The Sunlight As They Lie Embedded In The Wall, Are Mistaken For Jewels.

I Have Always Disliked The Morning, It Is Too Responsible A Time, With The Daylight Demanding That It Be 'faced' And (usually When I Wake For I Wake Late) With The Sun Already Up And In Charge Of The World, With Little Hope Of Anyone Usurping Or Challenging Its Authority. A Shot Of Light In The Face Of A Poor Waking Human Being And Another Slave Limps Wounded Into The Light-occupied Territory.

We Could Think Or Feel As We Wished Toward The Characters, Or As The Poet, Discounting History, Invited Us To; We Were The Poet's Guest, His World Was His Own Kingdom, Reached, As One Of The Poems Told Us, Through The 'ring Of Words.

When Our Thoughts Revolve We Are So Often Deceived Into Supposing That Their Violent Movement Is An Indication Of Their Vigorous Originality, The Upheaval Of Prejudice And Fixed Ideas, When All The Time It Is More Likely That The Machine Which Contains Them Is Only An Elaborate Cement-mixer, And When The Thinking Is Finished, Those Whirling Thoughts Are Smoothed Into The Unchanged Conventional Mould And Seeing Them Set Solid Enough To Dance, To Build, To Travel Upon, We Would Never Dream Of Their First Deceit, Of The Hope Once Roused By Their Apparently Violent Reorganisation.