Green finch and linnet bird, nightingale, blackbird
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate sitting in cages
Never taking wing?

Outside the sky waits
Beckoning, beckoning
Just beyond the bars

How can you remain staring at the rain
Hardened by the stars?
How is it you sing anything?
How is it you sing?

Green finch and linnet bird, nightingale, blackbird
How is it you sing?
Whence comes this melody constantly flowing
Is it rejoicing or merely aloaming?

Are you discussing or fussing
Or simply dreaming?
Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?

Ringdove and robinet is it for wages
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it's safer in cages
Singing when you're told?

My cage has many rooms, damask and dark
Nothing there sings, not even my lark
Larks never will, you know when they're captive
Teach me to be more adaptive

Green finch and linnet bird, nightingale, blackbird
Teach me how to sing
If I cannot fly
Let me sing