Universal Men

Universal Men - Johnny Clegg/Soweto Gospel Choir

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

And not me

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 let's them in

And they sing

And not me

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

And not me