The crowd stood still as laws were quietly unmade,
Their tongues entombed in fearful, guarded throats;
While one lone soldier broke the line, disobeyed,
Their whispers drowned beneath his dying notes.

The first to fall we left out in the cold—
Their causes strange, their battles not our own;
We turned aside as wickedness took hold
And cast them to their fates, forgotten, alone.

Then others fell like roses fed to flame,
While we perfected arts of staying blind;
We bore, we said, no portion of the blame—
This tyranny would surely fade in time.

But silence is a contract signed in night,
A covenant with devils we quietly deplore,
And every chain grows merciless and tight
With every truth we chose to ignore.

The cage descends on all we did not say,
Not with our protest, but our mute consent;
For silence writes its verdict day by day,
And we become the evil we’d prevent.