Tongues of Dust and Daylight

I speak for tongues the heavy earth has stilled,
For names the wind has worn away to dust.
Though every law and ledger was unskilled
To see their truth, their testament is just.
I am the echo from a hollow door,
The whispered history beneath the floor.

I speak for those bent double in the field,
Whose breath became a harvest they’d not keep.
Whose broken oaths and broken backs revealed
A wound too wide for any one to weep.
I hold the weight of all they could not say,
And turn their silence into light of day.

So let the marble halls record my tone,
And let the gilded ceilings shake with sound.
No tyrant’s peace can make me turn to stone,
No depth of night can make my voice be drowned.
For every cord you cut, my cry restores
A choral fury beating at your doors.