animal - ani difranco

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
At all the traffic on the road to nowhere
At all the shiny stuff around to buy
At all the wires in the air
At all the people shopping
For the same blank stare
At america the drastic
That isolated geographic
That's become infested with millionaires

When you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe
Mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you have to grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
Seeing that animals only take from this world
What they need to survive
But she is prowling through all the religions of men
Seeing that time and time and time again
Their gods have made them
Special and above
Nature's law
And the respect thereof

And I think when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

Ask any eco-system
Harm here is harm there
And there and there
And aggression begets aggression
It's a very simple lesson
That long preceded any king of heaven
And there's this brutal imperial power
That my passport says I represent
But it will never represent where my heart lives
Only vaguely where it went

Cuz I know when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You learn that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless
And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there
Where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall