Loud Speakers

The loud speakers

Blare out their music

Every morning at 6:00 AM

And at 6:15 the exercise instructor

Counts one, two, three, four, five

Six, seven, eight

More than one hundred times

And at 6:30 AM a man and a women

Broadcast the communist news

In falsetto operatic voices

Across the entire campus

For one half-hour more

And at 9:50 AM the music begins again

And lasts exactly 20 minutes

During the student's morning break

And at 12:00 AM the music begins again

For one half hour

And at about 4:00 PM

Students announce more news

And then again at 5:50, for twenty minutes

There's a strange kind of music and some

Bugger talking in soft, sonorous tones

Day in, day out, our schedule is well defined

Punctuated at precise points

By the rhythms of the air waves

The students mill about upon their breaks

Aimless and oblivious to the noise

They have no private place

To hide and compose their feelings

They have no freedom

Because they have no choice

And they do not know it

They only feel the numbing result

Of dirt and being poor