We bore heavy chains.
Cast from pride and denial and fear,
We trudged across a landscape of our own tears.
We trampled underfoot,
All who might have stood.
We curse our laughing, decadent masters,
Taunting, cruel masters,
Whose whips strip raw skin from our bleeding backs.
We can’t look at them,
We’ve never seen them.
Backs to us,
Our skin has been stripped away,
A new flesh appears underneath.
That of the masters.
We’ve been lashing ourselves inside.
We are the true masters.
But we can’t see that,
Because we’re not allowed to look.