If you were good and they thought
You’d be safe to walk along to the drugs
Hatch and pick up your own batch of mind
Snatchers, then that was ok, because
It meant they trusted you (fools) and you
Could wander along the corridors and gaze

At others who were on their own way to Hell
And back and sometimes not back at all,
But in some perpetual purgatory where
They were poked and tormented and maybe,
If lucky, purged and delivered sane
(What that meant no one said

Or maybe knew) but if they thought
You bad and unsafe, you’d not be
Allowed out of the locked ward,
But have to sit or wander around
And around the ward or adjoining
Rooms pulling faces at yourself in

Mirrors or windows, or arguing with
Others, nurses, or the quacks with
Their dark eyes and foreign accents,
Until the day’s light crept off,
And the night and lights out call,
And strange bedfellows came in

With the mutters and cries along
The watchtower where the night
Staff peered, sighed and smoked
And cursed and drugged you
And others (not themselves),
And too often joked amongst

Themselves like hyenas picking
Over some corpse; except these
Were alive, if living is what it was
They did, behind the tall walls
And high windows, with the endless
Hum of human voices, of the asylum.