[Intro]
[Instrumental: hammered dulcimer states the descending three-note motif; low guitars and marching floor toms enter.]

The eagle wears a strip of cloth,
The courthouse seals the record off,
A burned map curls beneath the seal,
But buried names refuse to kneel.

[Chorus]
[Call and Response: baritone and female mezzo answer, broad 6/8 metal pulse.]

[Baritone]
A republic of many bloods,
[Female mezzo]
Not one father's chosen flood,
[Both]
Every seam and scar still speaks
From desert roads to harbor streets.
Call it free when truth is heard—
Many bloods, one living word.

[Verse 1]
[Baritone]

The flag was sewn from borrowed thread,
From fields where unpaid bodies bled,
From treaty ink and auction chalk,
From chains that rang beneath the talk.
The marble mouths pronounced us free,
While ships unloaded misery,
And every column, white and tall,
Cast someone else's shadowed wall.

[Pre-Chorus]
[Both]

Count every stitch, recount the cost,
Name every nation crossed and lost.
A country cannot cleanse its birth
By painting blank the bloodied earth.

[Chorus]

[Baritone]
A republic of many bloods,
[Female mezzo]
Not one father's chosen flood,
[Both]
Every seam and scar still speaks
From cotton rows to factory streets.
Call it free when truth is heard—
Many bloods, one living word.

[Verse 2]
[Baritone]

At ports they bent unfamiliar names,
At mills they fed the furnace flames,
On railways cut through mountain stone,
Ten thousand accents built a home.
Black mothers marched through clubs and spray,
Young hands were jailed for sitting down,
Yet textbooks trimmed the price away
And placed one pale man in the crown.

[Instrumental]
[Cello, hammered dulcimer and low guitar trade the three-note motif; drums move through 7/8 and return to 6/8.]

[Bridge]
[Female mezzo]

Do not ask the mirror to lie.
Do not make innocence an alibi.
The scar is not the naming knife;
The lie is what prolongs its life.
No honest union comes from pride
That needs a people pushed aside.

[Buildup]
[Choir]

Many hands.
Many homes.
Many tongues.
No chosen bones.
Lift the cloth.
Unseal the word.
Let the buried names be heard.

[Final Chorus]
[Ensemble]

A republic of many bloods,
No pure father, no clean flood,
Every seam and scar now speaks
From council fires to crowded streets.
Call it free when all are heard—
Many bloods, one common word.

[Coda]
[Ensemble]

The eagle lifts its blinded head:
The living answer for the dead.

[Outro]
[Baritone and female mezzo]

The flag still waits above the mud,
A republic of many bloods.
Not purified—
But understood.
