Where have you been that made you weep   And left these stains upon your cheek   What did you see while you were gone   That haunts your eyes this sunny dawn      They herded us like so much meat   Up from the sewers to the street   Where concrete canyons stretched their walls   So high it made us want to crawl   Past proverbs writ on subway cars   And in-between the window bars   We walked until the pavement bled   And not a curse was left unsaid      Into a place that knows no spring   Where only steel and silver sing   They made us dance until we dropped   And the music of the jackhammers stopped      I caught a cinder in my eye   Searching for a patch of sky   But the shadows drizzled down like in Pompeii   That's how I spent my yesterday      Searching for America   In the rivets and the rust   Searching for America   Finding only dust      What did you see that made you cry   And left these trackmarks on your eye   What did you find while you were there   That sucks the light out of the morning air      They gave us each a cropper's shack   And land so hard it broke our back   Then fed us 'til our bellies burst   On promises that died at birth   So I lay the baby out each dawn   In-between the tender corn   With sunrise for her bonnet   And flies her only blanket      We harvested until we bled   'Til every single root ran red   And when the work was finally done   They gave our names to immigration   I did not know how bad it hurt   Until I lay there eating dirt   And the cold seeped in between my bones   That's where I was when I left home      Searching for America   All her dreams and hopes   Searching for America   Finding only ghosts      Who are these people you have seen   To dream this dark and distant dream   To tell the stories you have told   To leave these bruises on your soul      They are the flesh, they are the bone   They are the very cornerstone   They leave their mansions and their shacks   To hide here in-between the cracks   Their hope is tattooed on my lips   Bleeding from my fingertips   They are crawling toward the promised land   Hand over hand      To walk until they run no more   And wash up on some distant shore   Where truth is not the enemy   And whatever does not kill us, sets us free      Somewhere out there   Are millions just like me   Homesick for Eden   Heartsick at the memory      Searching for America   In every stick and stone   Searching for America   Going home   Searching for America   Going home