flag of freedom flying
“Song”, sung our soul, song was our soul
Giving life to our voices’ choir
But foreign heels mounted steeds
Whose nostrils flashed red fire
With a curse and a ceaseless hearse
Driven by a sleepless tyrant.
Not content to fuse and rent
As though playthings of a giant.
Breaking backs, distorting facts
Through floods of sharpened steel,
The repetition of wine-red mud
Brought by a foreign heel.
Voices stilled but still somehow
Heard above the dying
Bespoke the day our song would become
The flag of freedom flying.
Foreign heels smashed street names
Whose dust covered freedom’s sounds
Extinguishing the streets of life
Whose names now bayed like hounds.
Crushing hopes, with hangman’s ropes
Through a grinding inquisitor’s wheel,
The spool of death unwinding
Brought by a foreign heel.
Yet through the dust could still be heard
A song disguised as crying
And we knew one day our song would become
The flag of freedom flying.
Beyond our longings, beyond our dreams
Shaking mountains tore off their masks.
Ancient rituals of spring light
Cut through the questions we had asked.
Four lines, four lines of timeless song
Revolutionary to say the least
Forced dust once more to spell freedom’s names
Of our enslaved streets.
We flew as those songs down freedom’s streets
And heard a newborn babe’s crying
For the song we sung had now become
The flag of freedom flying.