Stolen Lands

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Rootweave

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We are the words that our ancestors give us
The breath that they breathe into life into us
The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us
And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought
A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out
A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without

I go through my days clasping spectres of what came before
A riverbed deep and flooded with the law, lore
Of the healers and witches
When knowledge was the barter for bread
And people knew something of what they live for
There's a rope twisted salty and I burn my hands
Defiantly wrapped by the herbs by the strands of the moon
That float from the loom of the dark night calling me
To take up corners and land
Land
But in the feel of it all I know something else
Something bitter and acrid and pungent in the shadow self
I may be born of the earth but the trees they were felled in my name
My mother's name
Grandmother's name
We come from a rising and falling of swords
Of blood smeared across chests and arrows in the horse
Of states and their curse and their worth in the order
Self willed no more

We are the words that our ancestors give us
The breath that they breathe into life into us
The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us
And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought
A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out
A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without

My tongue comes from a civilisation that worships
The pen and the fence and the men and the men
It's all men and their minds
What to ken from it all when the others were burned with their words
I could be from people who saw a disorder in poor
And strapped burden and death to their backs
While they hoarded the grain
Defiled the soul left it lame from the rain and the work
And the begging for more
But it might be that the people that fought in the fields and forests
The line of their young led to me
And the torrents that rage from mouth onto mouth
Through song incantation it's what i breathe
But i breathe in the air that was stolen from others
From black and brown bodies children wrenched from mothers
The ships, the trade and the cane and the fight to the death
Smothered people felled in the name of a name
And i see pillars of bone and blood for our foundations
All these nations the state reactive independence
But independence is fraught with the gaping wound
Left from the soul trading the empty womb

We are the words that our ancestors give us
The breath that they breathe into life into us
The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us
And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought
A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out
A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without

What's left I turn to my cunt to my womb
To the blood that flows tides into tides
To the roar and the swell
Capsizing the ships that sought dominance
It trues and it wields what we mean by common sense
And what is trued if not sense
Of our fingers our tongues and our ears
Fumbling round for roots to follow, linger
We cannot lie to our bodies they know
Little shells of our wild selves
So we live and we live and we dig and we pick
At a scab of a guilt that just needs time to heal
How to be real to another when the things that have built us
Are the thefts and the kills and the wills of a wasteland
We come from sickness in soil
The rich and their spoils
We are children of Luddites and pagans and diggers
Or we are children of war of gentry of piety
However we came here
Burnt by the same flame that splits veins casts chains
Rearranges our minds into confessions and naming names
Kill the cop in your head but what if the cop that is there
Is a thousand year old figurehead
The pain we inflict is a sign of the pain
That bore blood and burnt crops in the homestead
It is there that we come home to ourselves
Come home to the things that were stolen from us long ago

We are the words that our ancestors give us
The breath that they breathe into life into us
The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us
And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought
A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out
A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without
We are the words that our ancestors give us
The breath that they breathe into life into us
The dreams that they dream in the days and the nights of us
And if those ancestors speak in a tongue of drought
A breath charred by the desert sun too long left out
A dream splintered by what they've gone so long without
We need to come home to the things that were stolen from us long ago

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