The ancient trees we once were shown
Have taken root again
New matter grows where hate be sown:
A type of fruit that’s strange
The fruit it has no time to breathe
Enslaved by blue and white
A lynching starts as justice leaves:
Shoot first and then indict
Fruits swing as they have swung before
Their skin a foreign land
And from the branches of the law
The innocent still hang
Now executions breed with hate
In jogging neighborhoods
Where fruit is left to cultivate:
Chased down on roads of blood
The soil is fertilised with white
Fragility the noose
Strange fruit still swings; the death of life
And drips with human juice.