Lyrics and translation Greenfield feat. Kiya Sakari - Leaves

Leaves

The winter leaf doesn't fall far from the tree
You pick it up or leave it, it's not up to me
I'm learning every day about a facet of my people
Came a long way from stackin' bricks up in Egypt
Every thirty years they tryin' to put us in the ghetto
Then they say we got the strings like Gepetto
Cookin' lies that we can peddle
From the comfort of the shtetl
Can't put a cat inside a kennel, and expect it to settle
We rise up, turn a silo to asylum
Eyes up, make your kosher bread straight from the geyser
Wise up, the world doesn't like you, stop tryin'
Mind your own business, watch the racks pile up
Higher and higher, give your kids' kids kind luck
Attract ire from the white man who put you there
Now he sets it on fire
The horizon lookin' like a mass grave funeral pyre

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you

The wreckage of your heritage, tryin' to sound benevolent
Play the victim card, that's a game that you'll never win
Takin' over land, layin' down your settlements
Every goddamn lawyer steals my money and embezzles it
You takin' over banks, takin' over decimals
Takin' mommy's money, it was meant for medicinals
Leeches on society, take and then you try to leave
Enough is enough, stake your first sign of peace
We are not lambs for your line to the slaughter
We are not content with dyin' as the martyrs
We are not complacent, we'll die for the father
You think you're so smart? We'll fight a lot smarter
Smash the glass in, exterminate the fascists
Take your fraud money, burn your propaganda
Treat you like the vermin that you are, in sanguine
For all my life, I knew killin' was the answer

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you

Look into the future, do I raise a Jewish family
How can it be? Chosen people, that's a fantasy
My kids'll have a chip on they shoulder, cuz of vanity
Cuz I know I'll keep identity close to my core beliefs
I wish I could separate Normandy from normalcy
But in my mind my art will always carry the atrocity
Committed against my people on both sides of the odyssey
Pogroms and diasporas and holocausts in me
God laughs in the face of cruelty, it's accostin' me
300 centuries of solitude, fightin' for Thermopylae
Like Persephone, we ate the pomegranate seed
The Tree of Eden falls when we're close to the canopy
Blood is anarchy, blood is puttin' your cousin in front of sanity
Blood is brotherhood through tragedy
I worship the blood, cuz it's always there for me
Through every single trauma, blood has been my only guarantee

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you

Leaves

The winter leaf doesn't fall far from the tree
You pick it up or leave it, it's not up to me
I'm learning every day about a facet of my people
Came a long way from stackin' bricks up in Egypt
Every thirty years they tryin' to put us in the ghetto
Then they say we got the strings like Gepetto
Cookin' lies that we can peddle
From the comfort of the shtetl
Can't put a cat inside a kennel, and expect it to settle
We rise up, turn a silo to asylum
Eyes up, make your kosher bread straight from the geyser
Wise up, the world doesn't like you, stop tryin'
Mind your own business, watch the racks pile up
Higher and higher, give your kids' kids kind luck
Attract ire from the white man who put you there
Now he sets it on fire
The horizon lookin' like a mass grave funeral pyre

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you

The wreckage of your heritage, tryin' to sound benevolent
Play the victim card, that's a game that you'll never win
Takin' over land, layin' down your settlements
Every goddamn lawyer steals my money and embezzles it
You takin' over banks, takin' over decimals
Takin' mommy's money, it was meant for medicinals
Leeches on society, take and then you try to leave
Enough is enough, stake your first sign of peace
We are not lambs for your line to the slaughter
We are not content with dyin' as the martyrs
We are not complacent, we'll die for the father
You think you're so smart? We'll fight a lot smarter
Smash the glass in, exterminate the fascists
Take your fraud money, burn your propaganda
Treat you like the vermin that you are, in sanguine
For all my life, I knew killin' was the answer

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you

Look into the future, do I raise a Jewish family
How can it be? Chosen people, that's a fantasy
My kids'll have a chip on they shoulder, cuz of vanity
Cuz I know I'll keep identity close to my core beliefs
I wish I could separate Normandy from normalcy
But in my mind my art will always carry the atrocity
Committed against my people on both sides of the odyssey
Pogroms and diasporas and holocausts in me
God laughs in the face of cruelty, it's accostin' me
300 centuries of solitude, fightin' for Thermopylae
Like Persephone, we ate the pomegranate seed
The Tree of Eden falls when we're close to the canopy
Blood is anarchy, blood is puttin' your cousin in front of sanity
Blood is brotherhood through tragedy
I worship the blood, cuz it's always there for me
Through every single trauma, blood has been my only guarantee

Culture is destroyed in one stroke
Death sounds like a knock on your front door
Glass is broken, so you run home
But home is death, home is death
Brushed away like the leaves do
Your history is see-through
The one tie you have is your Hebrew
But the wreckage of your heritage is underneath you