Moonlit justice
of an imagined sunlit crime
Swung from an oak
a cruel pendulum mark of time
Some eyes tremble
Some eyes leer
all wonder at the marvel
of what happened here

Emmit's a lesson some can't forget
Emmit's a lesson some haven't learned yet

How many more
Must there be
Why does it take a man's death
for us to see

As we travel down the road of another man
Who will never travel the same again
Truck tires designed to ride him above
Much better used to drag him down in the night
For a crime no more sinister than
He wasn't born white

James Byrd's a lesson some can't forget
James Byrd's a lesson some haven't learned yet

Some thirty plus years between hence and thence
To be reminded how fragile the balance on the fence

Stewart and Griffith's a lesson some can't forget
Hawkins or a Diallo's a lesson some haven't learned yet