The trees are now streets,
the nooses now guns
but the “Strange Fruit” beat
goes on and on─
how many women and men, even children
are shot down, murdered
again and again
by badged, blue-sheeted gangs
or herded, disappeared
to be tortured in lawless lands.
In the song “Strange Fruit”
the trees were not at fault.
If they could have
they would have
cradled the lynched in leafy arms,
lifted their bodies up to the sun
in witness, in rage
laid them gently on the ground
and wept over them,
blood and tears streaming down the leaves,
as befits
precious lives they could not save.
The soil these crimes spring from,
the poisoned rot
of centuries of genocide, slavery, empire-primed atrocities─
more than a million tossed from slave ships,
tribes, whole peoples wiped from history─
must be dug up at the blood-glutted root,
the system and its tyranny torn down
before generation after generation
of “strange and bitter fruit,”
shriveled dreams and shattered hearts,
finally
can come to an end.