(for those who still have their voice)
Croesus, you count your kingdoms in coin,
your vaults in the weight of other men’s labour.
I count mine in mornings
when I can still open my mouth
and the words walk out unshackled.
You have your treasuries,
I have the street corner where a poem
can be spoken without a shadow
leaning in to take my name.
You measure worth in minted suns,
I measure it in the faces that stay
to hear the last line,
in the silence that follows
because it is listening, not enforced.
In your world, art is an ornament,
a bauble for the banquet table.
In mine, it is bread broken in the open,
shared without ledger or lock.
I am richer than you, Croesus,
because my metaphors are not contraband,
my stanzas are not smuggled in the lining of my coat,
my breath is not taxed at the border of my own tongue.
And yet I know the others —
the poets whose lines are buried with them,
whose names are whispered only in kitchens,
whose verses are memorised like escape routes.
For them, I speak louder.
For them, I spend my wealth of safety
as if it were gold,
laying it down in the marketplace of voices
where the only price is courage.
So keep your coins, Croesus.
I will keep my mornings,
my street corners,
my unshackled mouth.
And in the ledger of what matters,
I will always be the wealthier man.
.