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PATTI SMITH lyrics : "Strange Messengers"

(Smith/Kaye)
I looked upon the book of life
Tracing the lines of face after face

Looking down at their naked feet
Bound in chains bound in chains
Chains of leather chains of gold

We knew it was wrong but we looked
away
And paraded them down the colonial

streets
And that's how they became enslaved


They came across on the great ships
Mothers separated from their babes
Husbands stood on the auction block

Bound in chains bound in chains
Chains of leather chains of gold
Men knew it was wrong but they looked

away
And led them to toil in fields of white
As they turned their necks to a bitter

landscape

Oh the people I hear them calling

Am I not a man and a brother
Am I not a woman and a sister


History sends us such strange
messengers
They come down through time

To embrace to enrage
And in their arms even stranger fruit
And they swing from the trees

With their vision in flames
Ropes of leather ropes of gold
Men knew it was wrong but they looked

away
Messengers swinging from twisted rope
As they turned their necks to a bitter

landscape

Oh the people I hear them calling

Am I not a man and a brother
Am I not a woman and a siste
r We will be heard we will be heard

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