Brave New Poem
- after Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The pencil scurried illegibly across the page
there was a sound of light regular breathing
and a faint voice remotely whispering.

Then a shock of startling pain, it was something desperate
almost insane, like an explosion of bells, which slowly died
from tone to tone into silence.

The more advanced emotionally engineered
explained the rhymes of moral propaganda
to the victims, the savagely possessed, for enormous superiority.

The savage looked at them reproachfully
then suddenly fell on their knees, taking their hands
then kissed them, and whispered, if you only knew.

Suddenly somebody started singing, they all caught up the refrain
dancing around beating one another in 6/8 time.
They stopped then covered their eyes, crying, Oh My God, My God.

One young woman stood silently, smiling, a peach bright doll beautiful face her blue eyes grew larger, brighter, with a quick emphasised gesture she stretched out her arms and screamed, I want the whip, whip me.

She stood like a magnetic center of attention
her face a pane of fascinating horror
as they slashed at her with whips of small cords.

Oh the flesh, the savage ground their teeth, then slowly
very slowly as an unhurried compass needle, their feet turned
towards the north, north-east, east, south-east, south.

Robert Kennedy