Janis Ian - Searching For America lyrics

Where have you been that made you weep And left these stains upon your cheek What did you see while you were gone That haunts your eyes this sunny dawn They herded us like so much meat Up from the sewers to the street Where concrete canyons stretched their walls So high it made us want to crawl Past proverbs writ on subway cars And in-between the window bars We walked until the pavement bled And not a curse was left unsaid Into a place that knows no spring Where only steel and silver sing They made us dance until we dropped And the music of the jackhammers stopped I caught a cinder in my eye Searching for a patch of sky But the shadows drizzled down like in Pompeii That's how I spent my yesterday Searching for America In the rivets and the rust Searching for America Finding only dust What did you see that made you cry And left these trackmarks on your eye What did you find while you were there That s**s the light out of the morning air They gave us each a cropper's shack And land so hard it broke our back Then fed us 'til our bellies burst On promises that died at birth So I lay the baby out each dawn In-between the tender corn With sunrise for her bonnet And flies her only blanket We harvested until we bled 'Til every single root ran red And when the work was finally done They gave our names to immigration I did not know how bad it hurt Until I lay there eating dirt And the cold seeped in between my bones That's where I was when I left home Searching for America All her dreams and hopes Searching for America Finding only ghosts Who are these people you have seen To dream this dark and distant dream To tell the stories you have told To leave these bruises on your soul They are the flesh, they are the bone They are the very cornerstone They leave their mansions and their shacks To hide here in-between the cracks Their hope is tattooed on my lips Bleeding from my fingertips They are crawling toward the promised land Hand over hand To walk until they run no more And wash up on some distant shore Where truth is not the enemy And whatever does not k** us, sets us free Somewhere out there Are millions just like me Homesick for Eden Heartsick at the memory Searching for America In every stick and stone Searching for America Going home Searching for America Going home