In your Jasmine hall, I landed
Hoping to find refuge, to be free, and sleep,
But all I met were your stares,
sharp, cold, and protesting.
You gave the word of liberty, equality, hope,
But you can live with no refuge in your asylum-camps,
For my black skin, for my soul,
Aren't they the ones you have been saving?

Of justice, borders broad, you talk.
Of good arms and tender hearts,
But in your politics and in your pride,
The reality is evident--my liberty goes.
Thou hast a mask of liberal grace,
and there is a more profound hate beneath it.
A conspiracy, a dark embrace,
To tear apart what you debate.

You claim you are in love with the face of diversity.
But you choose and love selectively--
The door of thy asylum, poisoned place.
Where my black skin turns into a fool.
You open to the brown, you open to me;
To the religion that will suit your skin,
But to my brothers, sisters, bound,
It is just the disgrace of where we have been.

Chain after chain reclines in its history,
In broken lives.
Of souls-selling markets, there are,
Repeats now, in thy asylum, cry.
Where your brown friends are first in the fray.
Thou callest it asylum, a curing place,
But we, the Black, are mired in--
The dehumanised, with the uncovered injury.
In a set of spurious flight Caged.

Your liberties in thought and deed, Your feminist shouts,
Cover an uglier, more bitter reality,
You'd rather see my spirit die,
And side by side with me in youth.
To thy brown comrades Thy mute acclaim.
Turn every refuge into fear.
We are the ones who are erased,
Our dignity, a distant grace.

And, though you march with open eyes,
And your frontiers cry with shallow oaths.
You take your past to shadow the present,
And name it peace, a thwarted curse.
I look behind the mask, the veil,
This isn't an asylum, it's a jail,
Where my black skin is betrayed, burnt,
And all of my rights are gradually influenced.

I yearn that the truth should come into being,
That justice might justice turn again.
For all of us, no matter skin,
And seek the tranquillity that resides in.
But the hurt you have caused not so soon will heal.
And the wounds of the past never heal.

So, let this be a call to fight,
To each soul, To each right.
Black shall never be discarded any more.
We both disrupt, with fact and pride.