Ani Difranco - Animal Lyrics

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
At all the traffic on the road to nowhere
At all the shiny stuff around to buy

At all the wires in the air
At all the people shopping for the same blank stare
At America the drastic, that isolated geographic
That's become infested with millionaires

Yes and I think, when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless

And then you just grow wings
And rise above it all
Like there, where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

More and more there is this animal
Looking out through my eyes
Seeing that animals only take from this world
What they need to survive

But she is prowling through all the religions of men
Seeing that time and time and time again
Their Gods have made them special and above
Nature's law and the respect thereof

And I think when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless

And then you have to grow wings
And, and rise above it all
Like there where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall

Ask any ecosystem
Harm here, is harm there and there and there?
And aggression begets aggression
It's a very simple lesson

That long preceded the king of heaven
And there's this brutal imperial power
That my passport says I represent
But it will never represent where my heart lives
Only vaguely where it went

'Cause I know when you grow up surrounded
By willful ignorance
You have to believe that mercy has its own country
And that it's round and borderless

And then you just grow wings
And, and rise above it all
Like there, where that hawk is circling
Above that strip mall