The Man Who Counted True

In days of kings and cloistered scribes,

Where wealth was weight and debt was bribes,

A man stood up with steady hand,

And counted true, despite command.

He was no lord, nor prince, nor knight,

No keeper of the ledger’s right,

Yet numbers danced beneath his gaze,

Unmoved by courts, untouched by praise.

His father taught, as fathers do,

That wealth is not what men construe,

Not writ in ink on royal scrolls,

Nor sealed within the banker’s folds.

A coin is true when hands agree,

A weight is right when scales are free.

No edict makes the tally grow,

No scepter tells the grain to flow.

Yet law had learned a darker art—

To weave the world with paper’s heart.

The king decreed, the bishops swore,

That worth was theirs, and theirs alone.

They taxed the poor, they clipped the scales,

They turned the debts to iron jails,

And any man who dared protest,

Would find his name and home possessed.

But still he counted, still he weighed,

Through shifting laws and debts delayed.

He whispered sums in tavern halls,

And scratched his mark on cellar walls.

They mocked him first, then called him mad,

Then struck him down with verdicts clad.

They took his home, they seized his land,

Yet numbers slipped through every hand.

For in the dark, his work took flight,

It flickered through the silent night.

And every man who held it fast,

Knew wealth was free, and free at last.

The lords declared, "This cannot stand!

The world must kneel to our command!"

But still it moved, from hand to hand,

Beyond the reach of law and land.

They sent their spies, they burned their fires,

They drowned dissent in dungeons dire.

Yet every torch that scorched his name

Lit up a hundred more the same.

And though he fell, as martyrs do,

His numbers lived, his ledgers grew.

No king could break, no thief undo—

The man had taught the world what’s true.