Born Yesterday

[Verse 1]
Buried kin in rocky ground
Shallow grave, how sweet the sound
Amazing grace, first bus out of town
Lie boldface when the Man come around
They got 'nuff work if you can't find it
Brought Negroes work like Caribbean island
Old heads smiling, like "woods you wilin'"
Mayhap, slept in the shelter with the wave cap
Scoured the shower with Ajax
A man's own pride'll bait traps
Gnawed the limb, fled like rats
Fuck outta here with them late raps

[Chorus]
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

[Verse 2]
Rain sluices off trees, stride through wet leaves, heavy foot
Rotted out branches, the cancer advances
Captain hook, listening for that crocodile
Same dark wood he knew as a child
Fear of the forest
Entitled white girl tasted all the porridge
More the poorer for it
World on fire, but he wouldn't piss on it
Eyes burnished onyx
They gave us special glasses to watch the comet
I can still feel that African sun
It wasn't just us, the whole country was young

[Chorus]
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night
Born yesterday, but we stayed up all night

[Outro]
Outside lie dark turned fields, with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. A solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral landscape. Blacks in the fields lank and stooped, their fingers spider-like among the bowls of cotton. The shadowed agony in the garden