Red Cotton

I'm cutting up her pure white dress That I dyed red, that I dyed red I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets What time erases and memory mocks I'll send them over the ocean foam Right into those gentle European homes The slave ship 'Blessing' slipped from Liverpool Over the waves the Royal Navy rules To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin Where certain history ends and shame begins Dahomey traders paid powder and shots Line up their prisoners, sell them in lots They packed them tight inside those coffin ships And they took them to the brand new world Of auction blocks and whips So I'm cutting up her pure white dress That I dyed red, that I dyed red I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets What time erases and memory mocks I'll send them over the ocean foam Right into those gentle European homes White is the sheet on your fine linen bed The blood stained red on each cotton thread The merchants gathered at St. George's Hall To unveil the kneeling slave Who is carved upon the wall Picture the scene at the Old Salt House docks They loaded the iron shackles and locks Between a sandstone crocodile, a barrel and a bale You will see the nameless faces They were offering for sale So I sing the praises of God's glory As a blue cetacean floats in the basement An elephant on the second storey And they queue all day to see him In my American Museum But the Lord will judge us with fire and thunder As man continues with all his blunders It's only money, it's only numbers Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders But man is feeble, man is puny And if it should divide the union There is no man who should own another When he can't even recognize his sister and his brother