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

Yes 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

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 have to grow wings

And, and rise above it all

Like there where that hawk is circling

Above that strip mall

Ask any ecosystem

Harm here, is harm there and there and there?

And aggression begets aggression

It’s a very simple lesson

That long preceded the 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

'Cause I know 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, and rise above it all

Like there, where that hawk is circling

Above that strip mall