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Footprints in your Flesh

from Between Light and Dark by Penelope Swales

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lyrics

Footprints in your Flesh
© Penelope Swales 1993

Wurunjeri people
Do you hear me callin’?
Do you hear me talkin’?
Can you feel me walkin’?
In this land
This land is your land
My feet are on foreign soil and I feel it
In my bones and on my pale, pale skin

Wurundjeri people
Can you hear me talkin’?
Can you feel me walkin’?
Do my footprints leave their imprint on your flesh?
Is that your breath
I can feel on my skin?
Or is it just the wind?
But isn’t that the same thing

I’m standing
In the valley
Beside the river
And arcing above me is the aching sky
Before me
I can see the city
See its towers rising from its maze
See it nestled in the haze
Of Melbourne’s temperature inversion days

Koori
I can see the city
Spread out before me
But what I see
Is not what I find in my memory
Koori,
Please believe me
Many gentle people of my race have died
In this mad, mad scramble for empires

Sumerian, Acadian
Babylonian, Median
Chaldean, Darien
Alexandrian
Ptolemaic,
Roman Byzantine
Sassanid, Charlemagne
Holy Roman, Napoleonic
And now, ladies and gentlemen of Gondwanaland
Ladies and gentlemen of the great Southern land
We proudly present
In conjunction with the East India Company
Will you welcome please
The British Empire!
Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves
Britons never, never, never
Will be slaves….

Wurundjeri people
Do you hear me callin’?
Do you feel me walkin’?
Do my footprints leave their imprint on your flesh?

credits

from Between Light and Dark, released September 11, 1993
Penelope Swales - vocals, six and twelve string guitars
Joe Geia - didjeridoo, clapsticks
Trish Anderson - bass
Rowan Brown - drums

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Penelope Swales Boolarra, Australia

Penelope Swales has been articulating the human condition with passion and humour for 30+ years. She sings about politics, love, friendship, the unbreakable bond between us and dogs and the impact of the Internet on society. She won the 2019 Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice Award with “Cambridge Analytica”. “The Ides of March in Christchurch" was short-listed for the same award in 2020. ... more

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