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Robert Hill: Music

Human Chain

(Robert Hill)
One dark morning, heard the Songhai scream
One dark morning, heard the Songhai scream
Come that evening, their empire a shatttered dream

The tall ships came in with the dawn
Pale men looking like ghosts in the fog
The wheel was spun, the devil's turn
Another village left to burn

Tall ships, heavy in the hold
Sailed away with their screaming cargo

Three month voyage in twelve foot swells
Stacked like wood in a floating hell
Those that dfied, luckier than most
Worst things than dying, down in the hold
Sailed into the other world
No one understood their words

Take my brother, take my pain
Get you a ticket on a hellbound train
Take my misery, take my pain
Wrap it around you like a human chain

Ahuman cahin, a human chain
A human chain, a human chain

Up the river they would go
Families stripped of their sould
Human life exchanged for gold
Crack of the whip another one sold
But at night, by an embers glow
They would gather at the end of the road
Singing songs the man didn't know
Field hollers echo down cotton rows


Give it up, stop the pain
Got to break this human chain