The measured word is gone; the too quick reply
Rules every square where patience once held ground.
We speak to win, not weigh, and hurry by
The cost of what is lost in being loud.
Screens school us well in outrage and in speed;
The pause is mocked, the listening eye made strange.
Conviction travels faster than the need
To test the truths on which we stake our rage.
Courtesy, once power held in check,
Is named a fraud by those who strike with care;
The loud inherit what the wise neglect,
And certainty goes armed, but never fair.
Yet something older stands against the noise:
A law untrending, stubborn, hard to keep
That speech is more than signal or than choice,
And silence still belongs to thought made deep.
If this must die, let history record
Not how it fell beneath the shouting crowd,
But how a few still honoured the old word,
And spoke it low, precise, and not aloud.