Stolen Lands
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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"Stolen Lands Lyrics." Lyrics.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 May 2024. <https://www.lyrics.com/lyric-lf/12235341/Rootweave/Stolen+Lands>.
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