"Quod nos non occidit nos fortiores facit"
On a plantation in Georgia
Two hundred years ago,
The morning was young
Not a cloud in the sky
No one knew what we'd never know
We had much more living to do before we'd die
While up at dawn, they're singing songs
In a language not their own
They've forgotten theirs throughout the years
But still they're singing strong
Slavery is wavering
But still is lasting long
They sing and sing of many things
On the fields they work upon
To pass the time but in his mind
No one knows just what he's got
He can't speak the words,
So he thinks the words
The words he's never taught
Within his mind, we would find
He has the wisest thoughts
Thoughts that strike
Like lightning does
On the stormiest of nights
And ideas that roar
As thunder does
When echoing our fright
On the warmest day, while looking they
Know he's got 'em both
As it starts to rain, they think in vane
Which one scares them most?
And so they pass, the years at last
But all is still the same
Or so it seems within a dream
But in reality it rains
In reality I've made it, I've run so very far
Others running with me through all the bleeding dark
I lived to see a runaway on the edge of certain death
Live to breathe his final words
I lived to hear his breath
He looked directly in my eyes, I lived to hear him say
"I'd love to live a life, but I'm too brave to be a slave."
The pricken'd bleed, the pricken'd bled,
The sickened need are fed,
When stricken'd he's not tickled red,
When dying he
too winds up dead…
He hath eyes and he hath hands, but still that does no good
He bleeds to make them understand but still misunderstood
And so the man is forced to stand
In the rain he screams again,
The pricken'd bled, the pricken'd said
"Am I not a man!"?
And years all pass, till at last
I saw it yesterday
We're so far from the past
It comes back here to stay
A window breaks, a child wakes
A rock in anger thrown again
The child's "why?" within a cry
Her tears on mother's skin
The child asks with no answer back
So she asks her mom again
The child asks,
"Why're we're Black?"
Like being Black was a sin
Why's our skin
Blackened when
All of theirs is white?
All of this
She's questioning
But no answer's ever right
And looking out
The window they
Look upon the night
Before the rain
Would ever pour
Before the dawn would ever light
But she falls asleep as on the roof
Cadence rains its fallen drops
She's hearing songs from the past
In the language she was taught
She's also learned to not be weak
For her Heaven's sake
And so she sleeps without a weep
For she's too brave to stay awake
