The Final Bell: A Eulogy for the Forgotten Proletariat

Sleep now, weary hands,
for the world was never yours to hold.
You gave it shape, you built its towers,
but they only cast shadows over your days.

They told you to work, to sweat, to break,
to shoulder the weight of another man’s throne.
To trade your spine for a paycheck too thin
to cover a meal, let alone a dream.

When your child was born,
the clock did not stop.
No pause for the first cry,
no time for the first step.
A father’s hands, too calloused for lullabies,
a mother torn from warmth to fill another’s purse.

And when sickness took you,
you did not see a healer,
you saw a ledger, a debt,
a price tag on your suffering.

And when death knocked,
when your mother, your brother,
your love, lay still in the quiet,
grief was but an inconvenience.
Take a day, not two.
The machine cannot weep.

They told you, vote for me,
I will lift you from the depths.
But every ballot was a broken promise,
a cycle, a loop, a whisper in the wind.
For they are born of the same blood,
sons and daughters of silk and gold,
who drink from goblets filled
with the hours of your stolen time.

They have carved themselves away,
walled in their gardens,
sweet with berries and cream,
mere steps from your empty plate.
And still they tell you,
if you only worked harder…
if you only wanted it more…
you, too, could taste honey.

But the poor know the truth.
A tax on their hunger, a fee for their lack.
A punishment for being born on the wrong side of the ledger.
The banks do not charge the wealthy for their fortune,
but they will take from the starving
for daring to have nothing.

So here lies the worker,
not the one who fought,
but the one who surrendered,
who gave, and gave, and gave
until there was nothing left to take.

To you, we bid farewell.
Not in honor, for they gave you none.
Not in glory, for they stole it from you.
But in sorrow, in rage, in whispered curses
against the lords who feasted upon your life.

May your tired bones rest,
where no whip cracks,
where no clock chains you,
where no master calls your name.

And may the fires one day rise
to mourn you properly.