From Accra's coast the Zong set sail A coffin ship of sorrow's call And in the hold, in darkness thrown Fathers and sons were pressed as one Akan, Ewe, Yoruba, Fon The year was ending, fading slow Seventeen eighty-one, years of dread Four hundred forty souls restrained Chained to the damp, the bitter pain Their eyes held nothing but the coming dead The captain, lost within his route Confused and blind with greed's cold lie Called human lives but weight and load And chose to cast them to the cold One by one beyond the rail Into the deep where the Sun don't shine In the ocean's blue, a wail still moan Carried like a scar across the stone Lives tossed from the Zong, just cargo lost A wicked crime that broke the human soul In London courts where shadows crawl In halls where cold ambition lied They made their bargain, broke the law Six hundred coins for every death For every soul they claimed as lost In the ocean's blue, a wail still moan Carried like a scar across the stone Lives tossed from the Zong, just cargo lost A wicked crime no empire's voice could ever still Yet from the sorrow rose a flame Sharp, steady in his just acclaim And Equiano, freed from chains Two distant men who dared transform The lingering ache, the bitter sting Turned it into the voice that sings