Forgive Me That I Didn’t Come

(Mm)

Hm, mm

(Mm)

Forgive me that I didn't come

When the ships pulled away with my sons

Forgive me that I wasn't there

When my daughters cried out in the air

But baby, I was on my knees

Fighting battles you couldn't see

Chains were wrapped around my hands too

I was trying to break through to you

My babies in the Americas

Stripped of language, stripped of name

Haiti rising, paying the price

For daring to break the chains

I saw you, I always saw you

I wept for every wound

But my own house was burning down

I had to free these rooms

It was never that I forgot you

Never that I let you go

I was fighting just to breathe too

But the blood always knows

The blood always knows

The blood always knows

Le sang sait toujours

Igazi liyazi

Damu inajua

The blood always knows

I see your art in concrete jungles

I hear my drums in your heartbeat

You built their cities with bare hands

While dancing freedom in the streets

Jamaica singing liberation songs

Brazil, where my orishas still reign

From Harlem to New Orleans streets

You carried me through all that pain

The ancestors are not done yet

We're still here, still fighting

Oh, the ancestors are not done yet

This story's still being written

So forgive me that I didn't come (ah, eh-eh)

But know that you were never alone (eh-eh-eh)

Every prayer that you whispered in the dark

I was whispering it back home

The blood always knows

The blood always knows