Esperanza Spalding - Ebony and Ivy lyrics

Ochre, ivy, brick
And leather bound books built up by heavy
Lock crooks with unburdened minds of
Bastardized Darwinian logic projected as
Hard evidence on backs
And faces of our ancestral culprit's wasted
Toiling as a majority of plantated crimes

We wanna knock and climb
Strings of wisdom and
Build our own hot breath kingdoms and
Make humane passions rain down ash then hand
Out dirty white rules to wipe
Up and memorize then howl our own law
Hand-me downs upon the class of masses
And grin as each graduate passes on our
Synthesized words that sterilize natural awe

Sage grows on the mountain
You can dig it with a silver spoon
Float it off to market
Hawk and talk it from hot-air balloons
Get your good old-fashioned learning
Hear the bell in summers
Ending underneath the apple tree
Time to choose a branch
And build your nest of animosity
Now we're really, really learning

It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal

Sage grows on the mountain
'round the fountain of unfiltered truth
Someone's locked the well
You might contaminate their point-of-view
And the taste of high-class feelings

Peeking through the keyhole
Thirsty people watch the mastery
One degree of kneeling separates the
Heads from loving need
And the art of low-class feeling

It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal

Finally ochre, ivy, brick
And leather-bound books to find
And fill our minds
With double-standard visions by degrees
We master slaving
Over someone else's questions test their
Problems and abolish all unsavory
And good grammar and forbid
Shovels, picking their hammers
And the act of starching linen to become
The educated ones wrapped in them

It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal