Universal Men

I have undone this distance so many times before
That it seems as if this life of mine is trapped between two shores
As the little ones grow older on the station platform
I shall undo that distance just once more
My brothers and my sisters have been scattered in the wind
Dressed in cheap horizons which have never quite fitted
And for centuries they’ve traveled on a pale phantom ship
Sailing for that shore which has no other shore
And they sing in Zulu
From their hands leap the buildings, from their shoulders bridges fall
And they stand astride the mountains and they pull out all the gold
And the songs of their fathers raise strange cities to the sky
Where they did not belong and could not belong
And they never knew why
And they share with the swallows all their winters and their hopes
But often they get lost between the highways and the stores
And the rivers of the homelands murmur in their dreams
They’re shackled to that distance till heaven lets them in
And they sing in Zulu again
Well they could not read and they could not write, and they could not spell
their names
But they took this world in both hands and they changed it all the same
And from whence they came and where they went nobody knows or cares
Cast adrift between two worlds, they could still be heard to say:
I have undone this distance so many times before
That it seems as if this life of mine is trapped between two shores
As the little ones grow older on the station platform
I shall undo that distance just once more
And I sing in Zulu too