The clocks were all striking the hour of thirteen,
In London of Airstrip One, grey and unclean.
The banners of Big Brother hung on the wall,
With eyes that would follow you down through the hall.
Young Winston Smith sat with his pen in his hand,
A rebel in thought in a terrified land.

He opened a diary of creamy, sweet white,
To hide from the telescreen’s permanent sight.
The Thought Police hovered, the helicopters flew,
To crush every inkling of anything new.
“DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER,” he wrote in his dread,
Well knowing the writing had marked him as dead.

He worked at the Ministry, altering the past,
Ensuring the lies of the Party would last.
For war was now peace, and freedom was pain,
And ignorance kept them from breaking the chain.
But deep in his chest burned a dangerous flame,
A memory of history before it became.

[…]

Then Julia slipped him a note in the hall,
A promise of life past the Ministry wall.
“I love you,” it read, and the universe shook,
For love was a crime that the State never took.
They fled to the woods where the telescreens cease,
To trade their oppression for moments of peace.

They rented a room o’er an old antique shop,
Where time, for a season, appeared to just stop.
No telescreen watched from the wallpapered space,
Just dreams of the past in a comforting place.
They tasted of chocolate, of coffee and wine,
And fancied their freedom was something divine.

O’Brien arrived as a beacon of light,
A brother in secret to fight in the night.
He gave them the book of the truths they had sought,
The logic of power the Party had wrought.
But shadows were moving, the trap had been laid,
The price for their dreaming would soon be repaid.

[…]

The picture frame fell from the wall with a crash,
The iron voice boomed, and their hopes turned to ash.
The thought-hounds broke in through the window and door,
And Winston and Julia were lovers no more.
Old Charrington smiled as they dragged them away,
To cells where the darkness outlasted the day.

In Ministry depths where the light never dies,
O’Brien appeared, stripping away the disguise.
“We break you, we cure you, we empty your mind,
Until not a shred of yourself stays behind.”
He stretched him on racks, and he burned him with pain,
Till Winston believed two and two equaled plain.

Yet one final fortress remained in his chest:
His love for his Julia withstood every test.
So they led him deep down where the worst horrors wait,
To Room 101 and the cage at the gate.
The starving, wild rats screeching close to his face—
“Do it to Julia!” he screamed in disgrace.

[…]

The betrayal was total, the spirit was dead,
The cages of terror had conquered his head.
He sat at the Chestnut Tree, drinking his gin,
A broken old man with no fire within.
He’d met her again in the park, cold and grey,
But the magic they held had been stolen away.

The trumpet blared out with a victory cry,
As tears of submission welled up in his eye.
Two gin-scented tears trickled down by his nose,
As the shadow of freedom drew near to its close.
The struggle was finished, the healing complete:
He loved Big Brother in total defeat.