Rows of sewing machines
Stand silent sentinels
O'er the cluttered
Factory floor
Clothing scraps
Lie piled up
Not sorted out
With care
Nor thrown away
Or gone for good--
They shouldn't have
Been left there
A match was lit,
The flame was dropped
The doors were locked
Fire smoldered there
The cries and pleas,
Fell upon deaf ears
Their flailing
A distant dream
If you're burning
Better to fall
Then sit still in pain,
And lose it all
Those down below
Heard sick'ning thuds
Bodies falling,
Hitting mud.
Many died
Upon that day
Yet, not 'til later
Did the owners pay
They locked the doors
And then denied it,
There was no proof,
So the judges 'bided by it
Yet their deaths were
Not in vain
'Cause after that,
The states of factories changed
Factories improved,
Workers gained rights,
No more fires,
Much less frights
Yet those who
Died upon that day
Must be remembered still
'Cause otherwise
Their deaths were
Merely meaningless and nil.
Author notes
this is based upon an event that happened involving some women who worked in a clothing factory owned by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory--there was a huge fire(mostly because the ground was covered in huge piles of clothing and the working conditions sucked) and the supervisors kept the women from escaping the blaze--they blocked all exits and everything. A lot of the women threw themselves out of windows rather than die by burning alive. In any case, I thought that this was a horrible tragedy, and this is my tribute to the women who died in the fire. -H-
Written April 20th, 2006
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