He who saves his country does not violate any law.
But tell me—
Was it saving,
to take the labour and toil of Black folks,
to forge a nation from their blood,
to carve its foundation with their bones?
Was it lawful
to build upon the backs of the tortured,
to take the essence of the silenced,
to turn bodies into currency,
to rape, mutilate, consume,
to twist a people into shadows
so forgotten that even the dirt refused them?
Is that salvation?
Or is that the kind of law
written by hands too bloodstained to hold a pen?
Tell me—
Does a country that sets fire to foreign lands,
that topples thrones, that redraws maps with bullets,
that plays the arsonist
only to call itself the firefighter,
not break any laws?
What of those who gave you honest toil—
(not yours, but ours)
what of the hands that built the cities,
plowed the fields, raised the towers,
only to be left nameless beneath them?
What of the pain you draped across the red of your flag,
woven tight into its seams,
uncredited, unpaid, unburied, unseen?
Tell me—
He who saves a country,
does he not break a law?
Or is it only called law
when it is written for the hands that hold the whip?
