Into the serfdom

Say the word

In a totalitarian state
Freedom
Is not evicted
Abruptly
Overnight
From Tuesday to Wednesday
They will stint it slowly
Take it away piece by piece
(Sometimes giving back a piece
But never more than what was taken away)
Day by day in bits
In quantities imperceptible
Until the one fine day,
After a few or several years
We will wake up into the serfdom
Yet we will not even see it
We will be convinced
That so it should be
That so it always was.

This is my, perhaps poor, translation of the poem written by Polish Poet Kornel Filipowicz.