They are listening in the wires, 
in the walls, under the eaves 
in the wings of house martins, 
in the ears of old women, 
in the mouths of children. 

They are listening to this now. 

So let's hear it for the secret police, 
a much misunderstood minority. 
After all, they have their rights, 
their own particular ways of seeing things, 
saying things, cooking things, 
they too have a culture uniquely their own. 

                  And we think

they should have their own state 
where they could speak their own 
incomprehensible tongues, write 
their confessions, their own unknown histories, 
cultivate their habits of watching 
by watching each other, and fly 
their own flags there, at attention 
on parade in their medals at their monuments 
on their secret anniversaries, making speeches, 
singing praises to the God of Paranoia. 
And at the end of the day 
bury their dead, publish coded obituaries 
to each other, and rest at last 
in their own kind of peace, forever.