Seated at desks, our students
Bow their heads to assignments.
Paperwork gives the cocaine
Dream its fatal enchantment.
We chain Prometheus until
He eats his heart out.
Then Hercules stalks our streets
Burning, raping and mugging.
In Vienna young white horses
Levade, courbette and capriole,
Their coltish leaps and gambols
Encouraged into dance steps.
And kittens spring onto draperies,
Laughed at and applauded,
Or ricochet off chair arms
Practicing rat entrapments.
Not, like human children,
Rebuked into passive conformity
Which will issue in a ninety-year-
Old silent scream.
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