In resplendent suites where crystal prisms fall,
Gilded age titans mourn riches grown too small.
They pace on fine rugs from a strife-torn shore,
Restless, hungry, haunted—ever craving more.

Meanwhile, beneath the smoke of factory skies,
Where choking soot dims children’s hollowed eyes,
The pauper finds, when coin and hope are gone,
A peace well-purchased, though the cost was drawn.

For masters clutch at gold that turns to dust,
And merchants carve their profit from men’s trust,
While debtors, bowed by ledgers’ leaden chains,
Find solace in the quiet of what remains.

For those cast down, forgotten in the shade,
Who dwell beneath the world the rich have made,
The stones of ruin cradle their embrace—
The future still, surrendering to waste.

Yet look ahead—the ages twist the same,
Though smokestack labor’s traded hands and name;
The towers gleam with glass instead of grime,
But hunger echoes, constant, through all time.

Ten billionaires may chart the global course,
Their rockets fly while workers lose recourse;
Plastic paradises veil the daily strain
Of empty hands outstretched in silent pain.

The rich still quake at whispers of their fall,
Stock tickers flicker, fortune tempts them all;
While those below, with nothing left to spend,
Find peace in knowing loss has reached its end.

And so the poor, with the emptiness they keep,
Learn life is brief, its treasures shallow, cheap.
What counts is breath, and love, and fragile health,
Not gilded tombs nor graves that boast of wealth.