Classic Poetry Series

Langston Hughes
- poems -

Publication Date:
2012

Publisher:
Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive
 Langston Hughes(1 February 1902 – 22 May 1967)

Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and

columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form
jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.
He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue."

Biography

Ancestry and Childhood

Both of Hughes' paternal and maternal great-grandmothers were African-

American, his maternal great-grandfather was white and of Scottish descent. A
paternal great-grandfather was of European Jewish descent. Hughes's maternal
grandmother Mary Patterson was of African-American, French, English and Native
American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College, she first
married Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed race. Lewis Sheridan Leary
subsequently joined John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 and died from
his wounds.

In 1869 the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite, politically
active Langston family. Her second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of
African American, Native American, and Euro-American ancestry. He and his
younger brother John Mercer Langston worked for the abolitionist cause and
helped lead the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858. Charles Langston later moved
to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights
for African Americans. Charles and Mary's daughter Caroline was the mother of
Langston Hughes.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, the second child of school teacher
Carrie (Caroline) Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes (1871–1934).
Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns.

Hughes's father left his family and later divorced Carrie, going to Cuba, and then
Mexico, seeking to escape the enduring racism in the United States. After the
separation of his parents, while his mother travelled seeking employment, young
Langston Hughes was raised mainly by his maternal grandmother, Mary
Patterson Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas. Through the black American oral
tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary
Langston instilled in the young Langston Hughes a lasting sense of racial pride.
He spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas. After the death of his

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1

 grandmother, he went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two
years. Because of the unstable early life, his childhood was not an entirely happy
one, but it strongly influenced the poet he would become. Later, Hughes lived
again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln, Illinois. She had remarried when he was
still an adolescent, and eventually they lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where he
attended high school. The Hughes' home in Cleveland was sold in foreclosure in
1918; the 2.5-story, wood-frame house on the city's east side was sold at a
sheriff's auction in February for $16,667.

While in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. Hughes
stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype that African
Americans have rhythm. "I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of
us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing
the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows, except us, that all
Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet." During high school in
Cleveland, Ohio, he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and
began to write his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of
jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red", was written while he was in high school. It
was during this time that he discovered his love of books.

Relationship with Father

Hughes had a very poor relationship with his father. He lived with his father in
Mexico for a brief period in 1919. Upon graduating from high school in June
1920, Hughes returned to Mexico to live with his father, hoping to convince him
to support Langston's plan to attend Columbia University. Hughes later said that,
prior to arriving in Mexico: "I had been thinking about my father and his strange
dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I
liked Negroes very much." Initially, his father had hoped for Hughes to attend a
university abroad, and to study for a career in engineering. On these grounds, he
was willing to provide financial assistance to his son but did not support his
desire to be a writer. Eventually, Hughes and his father came to a compromise:
Hughes would study engineering, so long as he could attend Columbia. His tuition
provided; Hughes left his father after more than a year. While at Columbia in
1921, Hughes managed to maintain a B+ grade average. He left in 1922 because
of racial prejudice, and his interests revolved more around the neighbourhood of
Harlem than his studies, though he continued writing poetry.

Adulthood

Hughes worked various odd jobs, before serving a brief tenure as a crewman
aboard the S.S. Malone in 1923, spending six months traveling to West Africa

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2

 and Europe. In Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for a temporary stay in Paris.

During his time in England in the early 1920s, Hughes became part of the black
expatriate community. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U. S. to live
with his mother in Washington, D.C. Hughes worked at various odd jobs before
gaining a white-collar job in 1925 as a personal assistant to the historian Carter
G. Woodson at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
As the work demands limited his time for writing, Hughes quit the position to
work as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. There he encountered the poet
Vachel Lindsay, with whom he shared some poems. Impressed with the poems,
Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. By this time, Hughes's
earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into
his first book of poetry.

The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black

university in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He joined the Omega Psi Phi
fraternity. Thurgood Marshall, who later became an Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States, was an alumnus and classmate of Langston
Hughes during his undergraduate studies at Lincoln University.

After Hughes earned a B.A. degree from Lincoln University in 1929, he returned
to New York. Except for travels to the Soviet Union and parts of the Caribbean,
Hughes lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remainder of his life. During
the 1930s, Hughes became a resident of Westfield, New Jersey.

Some academics and biographers today believe that Hughes was homosexual
and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, similar in manner to Walt
Whitman. Hughes has cited him as an influence on his poetry. Hughes's story
"Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and
"queerness". To retain the respect and support of black churches and
organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes
remained closeted.

Arnold Rampersad, the primary biographer of Hughes, determined that Hughes

exhibited a preference for other African-American men in his work and life.
However, Rampersad denies Hughes's homosexuality in his biography.
Rampersad concludes that Hughes was probably asexual and passive in his
sexual relationships. He did, however show a respect and love for his fellow black
man (and woman). Other scholars argue for Hughes's homosexuality: his love of
black men is evidenced in a number of reported unpublished poems to an alleged
black male lover.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3

 Death

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died from complications after abdominal surgery,
related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath a
floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Arthur Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It is the entrance to an auditorium named
for him. The design on the floor covering his ashes is an African cosmogram titled
Rivers. The title is taken from his poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". Within
the center of the cosmogram, above his ashes, is the line: "My soul has grown
deep like the rivers".

Career

First published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which
became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The
Weary Blues (1926). Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during
the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries,
Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard
Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. Except for McKay, they worked together also
to create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

First published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which
became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The
Weary Blues (1926). Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during
the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries,
Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard
Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. Except for McKay, they worked together also
to create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black
middle class. They criticized men who were known as the midwives of the Harlem
Renaissance: W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke, as
being overly accommodating and assimilating eurocentric values and culture for
social equality. Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" in their art,
that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized
the divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community.
Hughes wrote what would be considered the manifesto published in The Nation in
1926,

"The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"

The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4

 our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.
If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain
free within ourselves

Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé. He

stressed the theme of "black is beautiful" as he explored the black human
condition in a variety of depths. His main concern was the uplift of his people,
whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of
the general American experience. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the
working class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy,
laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African-American
identity and its diverse culture. "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate
the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind," Hughes is
quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions,
and expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought to
reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into
reality. An expression of this is the poem "My People":

The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-

hate that united people of African descent and Africa across the globe and
encouraged pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Hughes
was one of the few black writers of any consequence to champion racial
consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. His African-American
race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black
writers, such as Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and
Aimé Césaire. Along with the works of Senghor, Césaire, and other French-
speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from the Caribbean, such as
René Maran from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana in South
America, the works of Hughes helped to inspire the Négritude movement in
France. A radical black self-examination was emphasized in the face of European

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5

 colonialism. In addition to his example in social attitudes, Hughes had an
important technical influence by his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as the
basis of his poetry of racial pride.

In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for
literature. The protagonist of the story is a boy named Sandy, whose family must
deal with a variety of struggles due to their race and class, in addition to relating
to one another. Maxim Lieber became his literary agent, 1933–1945 and 1949-
1950. Hughes's first collection of short stories was published in 1934 with The
Ways of White Folks. These stories are a series of vignettes revealing the
humorous and tragic interactions between whites and blacks. Overall, they are
marked by a general pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic
realism. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935.

The same year that Hughes established his theater troupe in Los Angeles, he
realized an ambition related to films by co-writing the screenplay for Way Down
South. Hughes believed his failure to gain more work in the lucrative movie trade
was due to racial discrimination within the industry.

In 1943, Hughes began publishing stories about a character he called Jesse B.

Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", the everyday black man in
Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day. Hughes seldom
responded to requests to teach at colleges. In 1947, Hughes taught at Atlanta
University. Hughes, in 1949, spent three months at University of Chicago
Laboratory Schools as a visiting lecturer. He wrote novels, short stories, plays,
poetry, operas, essays, works for children, and, with the encouragement of his
best friend and writer, Arna Bontemps, and patron and friend, Carl Van Vechten,
two autobiographies, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander, as well as
translating several works of literature into English.

During the mid-1950s and -1960s, Hughes' popularity among the younger
generation of black writers varied as his reputation increased worldwide. With the
gradual advancement toward racial integration, many black writers considered
his writings of black pride and its corresponding subject matter out of date. They
considered him a racial chauvinist. He found such writers, for instance, James
Baldwin, lacking in such pride, overintellectual in their work, and occasionally
vulgar.

Hughes wanted young black writers to be objective about their race, but not to
scorn it or flee it. He understood the main points of the Black Power movement
of the 1960s, but believed that some of the younger black writers who supported
it were too angry in their work. Hughes's work Panther and the Lash,

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6

 posthumously published in 1967, was intended to show solidarity with these
writers, but with more skill and devoid of the most virulent anger and terse racial
chauvinism some showed toward whites. Hughes continued to have admirers
among the larger younger generation of black writers, whom he often helped by
offering advice and introducing them to other influential persons in the literature
and publishing communities. This latter group, including Alice Walker, whom
Hughes discovered, looked upon Hughes as a hero and an example to be
emulated in degrees and tones within their own work. One of these young black
writers observed of Hughes, "Langston set a tone, a standard of brotherhood and
friendship and cooperation, for all of us to follow. You never got from him, 'I am
the Negro writer,' but only 'I am a Negro writer.' He never stopped thinking
about the rest of us."

Political Views

Hughes, like many black writers and artists of his time, was drawn to the
promise of Communism as an alternative to a segregated America. Many of his
lesser-known political writings have been collected in two volumes published by
the University of Missouri Press and reflect his attraction to Communism. An
example is the poem "A New Song".

In 1932, Hughes became part of a group of black people who went to the Soviet
Union to make a film depicting the plight of African Americans in the United
States. The film was never made, but Hughes was given the opportunity to travel
extensively through the Soviet Union and to the Soviet-controlled regions in
Central Asia, the latter parts usually closed to Westerners. While there, he met
African-American Robert Robinson, living in Moscow and unable to leave. In
Turkmenistan, Hughes met and befriended the Hungarian polymath Arthur
Koestler. Hughes also managed to travel to China and Japan before returning to
the States.

Hughes's poetry was frequently published in the CPUSA newspaper and he was
involved in initiatives supported by Communist organizations, such as the drive
to free the Scottsboro Boys. Partly as a show of support for the Republican
faction during the Spanish Civil War, in 1937 Hughes traveled to Spain as a
correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-
American newspapers. Hughes was also involved in other Communist-led
organizations like the John Reed Clubs and the League of Struggle for Negro
Rights. He was more of a sympathizer than an active participant. He signed a
statement in 1938 supporting Joseph Stalin's purges and joined the American
Peace Mobilization in 1940 working to keep the U.S. from participating in World
War II.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7

 Hughes initially did not favor black American involvement in the war because of
the persistence of discriminatory U.S. Jim Crow laws existing while blacks were
encouraged to fight against Fascism and the Axis powers. He came to support
the war effort and black American involvement in it after deciding that blacks
would also be contributing to their struggle for civil rights at home.

Hughes was accused of being a Communist by many on the political right, but he
always denied it. When asked why he never joined the Communist Party, he
wrote "it was based on strict discipline and the acceptance of directives that I, as
a writer, did not wish to accept." In 1953, he was called before the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Following his appearance, he distanced himself from Communism and was
subsequently rebuked by some who had previously supported him on the Radical
Left. Over time, Hughes would distance himself from his most radical poems. In
1959 his collection of Selected Poems was published. He excluded his most
controversial work from this group of poems.

Stage and Film Depictions

Hughes's life has been depicted in many stage and film productions. Hannibal of
the Alps by Michael Dinwiddie and Paper Armor by Eisa Davis are plays by
African-American playwrights which deal with Hughes's sexuality. In the 1989
film, Looking for Langston, British filmmaker Isaac Julien claimed Hughes as a
black gay icon — Julien thought that Hughes' sexuality had historically been
ignored or downplayed. In the film Get on the Bus, directed by Spike Lee, a black
gay character, played by Isaiah Washington, invokes the name of Hughes and
punches a homophobic character while commenting, "This is for James Baldwin
and Langston Hughes." Film portrayals of Hughes include Gary LeRoi Gray's role
as a teenage Hughes in the 2003 short subject film Salvation (based on a portion
of his autobiography The Big Sea) and Daniel Sunjata as Hughes in the 2004 film
Brother to Brother. Hughes' Dream Harlem, a documentary by Jamal Joseph,
examines Hughes' works and environment.

Literary Archives

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University holds the
Langston Hughes papers (1862–1980) and the Langston Hughes collection
(1924–1969) containing letters, manuscripts, personal items, photographs,
clippings, artworks, and objects that document the life of Hughes. The Langston
Hughes Memorial Library on the campus of Lincoln University, as well as at the
James Weldon Johnson Collection within the Yale University also hold archives of

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8

 Hughes' work.

Honors and Awards

1943, Lincoln University awarded Hughes an honorary Litt.D.

1960, the NAACP awarded Hughes the Spingarn Medal for distinguished
achievements by an African American.
1961 National Institute of Arts and Letters.
1963 Howard University awarded Hughes an honorary doctorate.
1973, the first Langston Hughes Medal was awarded by the City College of New
York.
1979, Langston Hughes Middle School was created in Reston, Virginia.
1981, New York City Landmark status was given to the Harlem home of Langston
Hughes at 20 East 127th Street by the New York City Landmarks Preservation
Commission and 127th St. was renamed Langston Hughes Place. The Langston
Hughes House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
2002 The United States Postal Service added the image of Langston Hughes to
its Black Heritage series of postage stamps.
2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Langston Hughes on his list of 100
Greatest African Americans.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9

 50-50

I’m all alone in this world, she said,

Ain’t got nobody to share my bed,
Ain’t got nobody to hold my hand—
The truth of the matter’s
I ain’t got no man.

Big Boy opened his mouth and said,

Trouble with you is
You ain’t got no head!
If you had a head and used your mind
You could have me with you
All the time.

She answered, Babe, what must I do?

He said, Share your bed—

And your money, too.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 10

 Acceptance

God in His infinite wisdom

Did not make me very wise-
So when my actions are stupid
They hardly take God by surprise

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 11

 Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria

Fine living . . . a la carte?

Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!

Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."

Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.

Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 12

 because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 13

 April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 14

 Ardella

I would liken you

To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 15

 As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.

I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 16

 Bad Morning

Here I sit
With my shoes mismated.
Lawdy-mercy!
I's frustrated!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 17

 Bound No’th Blues

Goin’ down the road, Lawd,

Goin’ down the road.
Down the road, Lawd,
Way,way down the road.
Got to find somebody
To help me carry this load.

Road’s in front o’ me,

Nothin’ to do but walk.
Road’s in front of me,
Walk…an’ walk…an’ walk.
I’d like to meet a good friend
To come along an’ talk.

Hates to be lonely,
Lawd, I hates to be sad.
Says I hates to be lonely,
Hates to be lonely an’ sad,
But ever friend you finds seems
Like they try to do you bad.

Road, road, road, O!

Road, road…road…road, road!
Road, road, road, O!
On the no’thern road.
These Mississippi towns ain’t
Fit fer a hoppin’ toad.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 18

 Bouquet

Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 19

 Brass Spittoons

Clean the spittoons, boy.

Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
Palm Beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars
Buy shoes for the baby.
House rent to pay.
Gin on Saturday,
Church on Sunday.
My God!
Babies and gin and church
And women and Sunday
All mixed with dimes and
Dollars and clean spittoons
And house rent to pay.
Hey, boy!
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord.
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
Of King David’s dancers,
Like the wine cups of Solomon.
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
A clean bright spittoon all newly polished—
At least I can offer that.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 20

 Com’mere, boy!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 21

 Catch

Big Boy came

Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail
Curved
Beneath his arm.

Being a fisher boy,

He’d found a fish
To carry—
Half fish,
Half girl
To marry.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 22

 Children's Rhymes

By what sends
the white kids
I ain't sent:
I know I can't
be President.
What don't bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain't free.

Lies written down

for white folks
ain't for us a-tall:
<i>Liberty And Justice--</i>
Huh!--<i>For All?</i>

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 23

 Cross

My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 24

 Cultural Exchange

In the Quarter of the Negroes

Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
Amorphous jack-o'-Lanterns caper
And the wind won't wait for midnight
For fun to blow doors down.
By the river and the railroad
With fluid far-off goind
Boundaries bind unbinding
A whirl of whisteles blowing.
No trains or steamboats going--
Yet Leontyne's unpacking.

In the Quarter of the Negroes

Where the doorknob lets in Lieder
More than German ever bore,
Her yesterday past grandpa--
Not of her own doing--
In a pot of collard greens
Is gently stewing.

Pushcarts fold and unfold

In a supermarket sea.
And we better find out, mama,
Where is the colored laundromat
Since we move dup to Mount Vernon.

In the pot begind the paper doors

on the old iron stove what's cooking?
What's smelling, Leontyne?
Lieder, lovely Lieder
And a leaf of collard green.
Lovely Lieder, Leontyne.

You know, right at Christmas

They asked me if my blackness,
Would it rub off?
I said, Ask your mama.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 25

 Dreams and nightmares!
Nightmares, dreams, oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--
Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--

Comes the COLORED HOUR:

Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!

<i>Culture, they say, is a two-way street:</i>

Hand me my mint julep, mammny.
Hurry up!
Make haste!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 26

 Daybreak In Alabama

When I get to be a composer

I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 27

 Deceased

Harlem
Sent him home
in a long box-
Too dead
To know why:

The licker
Was lye.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 28

 Demand

Listen!
Dear dream of utter aliveness-
Touching my body of utter death-
Tell me, O quickly! dream of aliveness,
The flaming source of your bright breath.
Tell me, O dream of utter aliveness-
Knowing so well the wind and the sun-
Where is this light
Your eyes see forever?
And what is the wind
You touch when you run?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 29

 Democracy

Democracy will not come

Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right

As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,

Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.

I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 30

 Dinner Guest: Me

I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To Probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A.--
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."

The lobster is delicious,

The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 31

 Dream Boogie

Good morning, daddy!

Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a -

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a -

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 32

 Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 33

 Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 34

 Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 35

 Dying Beast

Sensing death,
The buzzards gather —
Noting the last struggle
Of flesh under weather,
Noting the last glance
Of agonized eye
At passing wind
And boundless sky.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 36

 Easy Boogie

Down in the bass

That steady beat
Walking walking walking
Like marching feet.

Down in the bass

They easy roll,
Rolling like I like it
In my soul.

Riffs, smears, breaks.

Hey, Lawdy Mama!

Do you hear what I said?
Easy like I rock it
In my bed!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 37

 Enemy

It would be nice
In any case,
To someday meet you
Face to face
Walking down
The road to hell...
As I come up
Feeling swell.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 38

 Ennui

It's such a
Bore
Being always
Poor.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 39

 Feet o' Jesus

At the feet o' Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea.
Lordy, let yo' mercy
Come driftin' down on me.

At the feet o' Jesus

At yo' feet I stand.
O, ma little Jesus,
Please reach out yo' hand.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 40

 Final Curve

When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 41

 Fire-Caught

The gold moth did not love him

So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 42

 For Selma

In places like
Selma, Alabama,
Kids say,
In places like
Chicago and New York...
In places like
Chicago and New York
Kids say,
In places like
London and Paris...
In places like
London and Paris
Kids say,
In places like
Chicago and New York...

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 43

 Freedom's Plow

When a man starts out with nothing,

When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-

Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.

The eyes see there materials for building,

See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.

A long time ago, but not too long ago,

Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!

With billowing sails the galleons came

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 44

 Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom.

Down into the earth went the plow

In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.

Labor! Out of labor came villages

And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 45

 Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it’s the U.S.A.

A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL-
ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS-
AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently took for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
BETTER TO DIE FREE
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 46

 With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
'Or if it would,' thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.

America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
'You are a man. Together we are building our land.'

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 47

 America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don’t be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don’t be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!

A long time ago,

An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 48

 For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 49

 Genius Child

This is a song for the genius child.

Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can -
Lest the song get out of hand.

&lt;i&gt;Nobody loves a genius child.&lt;/i&gt;

Can you love an eagle,

Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?

&lt;i&gt;Nobody loves a genius child.&lt;/i&gt;

&lt;i&gt;Kill him&lt;/i&gt; - and let his soul run wild.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 50

 God

I am God—
Without one friend,
Alone in my purity
World without end.
Below me young lovers
Tread the sweet ground—
But I am God—
I cannot come down.
Spring!
Life is love!
Love is life only!
Better to be human
Than God—and lonely.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 51

 Gods

The ivory gods,

And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people
Are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 52

 Harlem [dream Deferred]

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 53

 Helen Keller

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul's own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 54

 I Continue To Dream

I take my dreams and make of them a bronze vase

and a round fountain with a beautiful statue in its center.
And a song with a broken heart and I ask you:
Do you understand my dreams?
Sometimes you say you do,
And sometimes you say you don't.
Either way it doesn't matter.
I continue to dream.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 55

 I Dream A World

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 56

 I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 57

 In Time Of Silver Rain

In time of silver rain

The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads

Of Life,
Of Life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain

The butterflies lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth new leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,

In time of silver rain When spring

And life
Are new.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 58

 Jazzonia

Oh, silver tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve's eyes

In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree!

Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 59

 Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night

and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 60

 Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 61

 Kids Who Die

This is for the kids who die,

Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi

Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned

Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don't want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don't want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 62

 Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,
Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 63

 Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 64

 I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 65

 Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 66

 Life Is Fine

I went down to the river,

I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!

I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator

Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!

I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',

I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,

And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 67

 Lincoln Monument: Washington

Let's go see Old Abe

Sitting in the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely in the marble and the moonlight,
Quiet for ten thousand centuries, old Abe.
Quiet for a million, million years.

Quiet-

And yet a voice forever

Against the
Timeless walls
Of time-
Old Abe.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 68

 Lonesome Place

I got to leave this town.

It’s a lonesome place.
Got to leave this town cause
It’s a lonesome place.
A po’, po’ boy can’t
Find a friendly face.

Goin’ down to de river

Flowin’ deep an’ slow.
Goin’ down to de river
Deep an’ slow-
Cause there ain’t no worries
Where de waters go.

I’m weary, weary,

Weary, as I can be.
Weary, weary,
Weary as can be.
This life’s so weary,
‘S’ bout to overcome me.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 69

 Love Song For Lucinda

Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.

Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.

Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 70

 Madam And Her Madam

I worked for a woman,

She wasn't mean--
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.

Had to get breakfast,

Dinner, and supper, too--
Then take care of her children
When I got through.

Wash, iron, and scrub,

Walk the dog around--
It was too much,
Nearly broke me down.

I said, Madam,
Can it be
You trying to make a
Pack-horse out of me?

She opened her mouth.

She cried, Oh, no!
You know, Alberta,
I love you so!

I said, Madam,
That may be true--
But I'll be dogged
If I love you!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 71

 Madam And The Census Man

The census man,

The day he came round,
Wanted my name
To put it down.

I said, Johnson,
Alberta K.
But he hated to write
The K that way.

He said, What
Does K stand for?
I said, K--
And nothing more.

He said, I'm gonna put it

K?A?Y.
I said, If you do,
You lie.

My mother christened me
Alberta K.
You leave my name
Just that way!

He said, Mrs.,
(With a snort)
Just a K
Makes your name too short.

I said, I don't
Give a damn!
Leave me and my name
Just like I am!

Furthermore, rub out

That MRS., too--
I'll have you know
I'm Madam to you!

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 72

 Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 73

 Madam And The Phone Bill

You say I
LONG DISTANCE?
it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!

I'm mad and disgusted

With that Negro now.
I don't pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.

You say, I will pay it--

Else you'll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.

I didn't ask him

To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain't free.

If I ever catch him,

Lawd, have pity!
Calling me up
From Kansas City.

Just to say he loves me!

I knowed that was so.
Why didn't he tell me some'n
I don't know?

For instance, what can

Them other girls do
That Alberta K. Johnson
Can't do--and more, too?

What's that, Central?

You say you don't care

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 74

 Nothing about my
Private affair?

Well, even less about your

PHONE BILL, does I care!

Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!
You say I gave my O.K.?
Well, that O.K. you may keep--

But I sure ain't gonna pay!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 75

 Madam And The Rent Man

The rent man knocked.

He said, Howdy-do?
I said, What
Can I do for you?
He said, You know
Your rent is due.

I said, Listen,
Before I'd pay
I'd go to Hades
And rot away!

The sink is broke,

The water don't run,
And you ain't done a thing
You promised to've done.

Back window's cracked,

Kitchen floor squeaks,
There's rats in the cellar,
And the attic leaks.

He said, Madam,
It's not up to me.
I'm just the agent,
Don't you see?

I said, Naturally,
You pass the buck.
If it's money you want
You're out of luck.

He said, Madam,
I ain't pleased!
I said, Neither am I.
So we agrees!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 76

 Madam's Past History

My name is Johnson--
Madam Alberta K.
The Madam stands for business.
I'm smart that way.

I had a
HAIR-DRESSING PARLOR
Before
The depression put
The prices lower.

Then I had a
BARBECUE STAND
Till I got mixed up
With a no-good man.

Cause I had a insurance

The WPA
Said, We can't use you
Wealthy that way.

I said,
DON'T WORRY 'BOUT ME!
Just like the song,
You WPA folks take care of yourself--
And I'll get along.

I do cooking,
Day's work, too!
Alberta K. Johnson--
Madam to you.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 77

 Me And The Mule

My old mule,
He's gota grin on his face.
He's been a mule so long
He's forgotten about his race.

I'm like that old mule --

Black -- and don't give a damn!
You got to take me
Like I am.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 78

 Merry-Go-Round

Where is the Jim Crow section

On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we're put in the back—
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 79

 Minstrel Man

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?

Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 80

 Morning After

I was so sick last night I

Didn’t hardly know my mind.
So sick last night I
Didn’t know my mind.
I drunk some bad licker that
Almost made me blind.

Had a dream last night I

Thought I was in hell.
I drempt last night I
Thought I was in hell.
Woke up and looked around me—
Babe, your mouth was open like a well.

I said, Baby! Baby!

Please don’t snore so loud.
Baby! Please!
Please don’t snore so loud.
You jest a little bit o’ woman but you
Sound like a great big crowd.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 81

 Mother To Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 82

 Motto

I play it cool
I dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive
My motto
As I live and learn
Is dig and be dug in return

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 83

 My People

The night is beautiful,

So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,

So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 84

 Negro Dancers

'Me an' ma baby's

Got two mo' ways,
Two mo' ways to do de Charleston!'
Da, da,
Da, da, da!
Two mo' ways to do de Charleston!'
Soft light on the tables,
Music gay,
Brown-skin steppers
In a cabaret.
White folks, laugh!
White folks, pray!
'Me an' ma baby's
Got two mo' ways,
Two mo' ways to do de
Charleston!'

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 85

 Negro Speaks Of Rivers

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 86

 Night Funeral In Harlem

Night funeral
In Harlem:

Where did they get

Them two fine cars?

Insurance man, he did not pay--

His insurance lapsed the other day--
Yet they got a satin box
for his head to lay.

Night funeral
In Harlem:

Who was it sent

That wreath of flowers?

Them flowers came

from that poor boy's friends--
They'll want flowers, too,
When they meet their ends.

Night funeral
in Harlem:

Who preached that

Black boy to his grave?

Old preacher man

Preached that boy away--
Charged Five Dollars
His girl friend had to pay.

Night funeral
In Harlem:

When it was all over

And the lid shut on his head
and the organ had done played

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 87

 and the last prayers been said
and six pallbearers
Carried him out for dead
And off down Lenox Avenue
That long black hearse done sped,
The street light
At his corner
Shined just like a tear--
That boy that they was mournin'
Was so dear, so dear
To them folks that brought the flowers,
To that girl who paid the preacher man--
It was all their tears that made
That poor boy's
Funeral grand.

Night funeral
In Harlem.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 88

 Oppression

Now dreams
Are not available
To the dreamers,
Nor songs
To the singers.

In some lands
Dark night
And cold steel
Prevail
But the dream
Will come back,
And the song
Break
Its jail.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 89

 Park Bench

I live on a park bench.

You, Park Avenue.
Hell of a distance
Between us two.

I beg a dime for dinner-

You got a butler and maid.
But I'm wakin' up!
Say, ain't you afraid

That I might, just maybe,

In a year or two,
Move on over
To Park Avenue?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 90

 Peace

We passed their graves:

The dead men there,
Winners or losers,
Did not care.
In the dark
They could not see
Who had gained
The victory.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 91

 Personal

In an envelope marked:
PERSONAL
God addressed me a letter.
In an envelope marked:
PERSONAL
I have given my answer.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 92

 Pierrot

I work all day,

Said Simple John,
Myself a house to buy.
I work all day,
Said Simple John,
But Pierrot wondered why.
For Pierrrot loved the long white road,
And Pierrot loved the moon,
And Pierrot loved a star-filled sky,
And the breath of a rose in June.
I have one wife,
Said Simple John,
And,faith,I love her yet.
I have one wife,
Said Simple John,
But Pierrot left Pierrette.

For Pierrot saw a world of girls,

And Pierrot loved each one,
And Pierrot thought all maidens fair
As flowers in the sun.
Oh, I am good,
Said Simple John,
The Lord will take me in.
Yes, I am good,
Said Simple John,
But Pierrot's steeped in sin.
For Pierrot played on a slim guitar,
And Pierrot loved the moon,
And Pierrot ran down the long white road
With the burgher's wife one June.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 93

 Po' Boy Blues

When I was home de

Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world's turned cold.

I was a good boy,

Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An' de road is hard an' long.

I fell in love with

A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.

Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I's so weary
I wish I'd never been born.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 94

 Prize Fighter

Only dumb guys fight.

If I wasn't dumb
I wouldn't be fightin'.
I could make six dollars a day
On the docks
And I'd save more than I do now.
Only dumb guys fight.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 95

 Problems

2 and 2 are 4.
4 and 4 are 8.

But what would happen

If the last 4 was late?

And how would it be

If one 2 was me?

Or if the first 4 was you

Divided by 2?

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 96

 Question [1]

When the old junk man Death

Comes to gather up our bodies
And toss them into the sack of oblivion,
I wonder if he will find
The corpse of a white multi-millionaire
Worth more pennies of eternity,
Than the black torso of
A Negro cotton-picker.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 97

 Quiet Girl

I would liken you

To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 98

 Sea Calm

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today,
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 99

 Sick Room

How quiet
It is in this sick room
Where on the bed
A silent woman lies between two lovers-
Life and Death,
And all three covered with a sheet of pain.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 100

 Silence

I catch the pattern

Of your silence
Before you speak

I do not need
To hear a word.

In your silence
Every tone I seek
Is heard.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 101

 Snake

He glides so swiftly
Back into the grass-
Gives me the courtesy of road
To let me pass,
That I am half ashamed
To seek a stone
To kill him.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 102

 Song For A Dark Girl

Way Down South in Dixie

(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie

(Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie

(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 103

 Songs

I sat there singing her

Songs in the dark.

She said;
'I do not understand
The words'.

I said;
'There are
No words'.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 104

 Still Here

been scarred and battered.

My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done

Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-

But I don't care!
I'm still here!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 105

 Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 106

 Sylvester’s Dying Bed

I woke up this mornin’

’Bout half-past three.
All the womens in town
Was gathered round me.

Sweet gals was a-moanin’,

“Sylvester’s gonna die!”
And a hundred pretty mamas
Bowed their heads to cry.

I woke up little later

’Bout half-past fo’,
The doctor ‘n’ undertaker’s
Both at ma do’.

Black gals was a-beggin’,

“You can’t leave us here!”
Brown-skins cryin’, “Daddy!
Honey! Baby! Don’t go, dear!”

But I felt ma time’s a-comin’,

And I know’d I’s dyin’ fast.
I seed the River Jerden
A-creepin’ muddy past—
But I’s still Sweet Papa ’Vester,
Yes, sir! Long as life do last!

So I hollers, “Com’ere, babies,

Fo’ to love yo’ daddy right!”
And I reaches up to hug ’em—
When the Lawd put out the light.

Then everything was darkness

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 107

 In a great ... big ... night.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 108

 Thanksgiving Time

When the night winds whistle through the trees and blow the crisp brown leaves
a-crackling down,
When the autumn moon is big and yellow-orange and round,
When old Jack Frost is sparkling on the ground,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the pantry jars are full of mince-meat and the shelves are laden with sweet
spices for a cake,
When the butcher man sends up a turkey nice and fat to bake,
When the stores are crammed with everything ingenious cooks can make,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

When the gales of coming winter outside your window howl,

When the air is sharp and cheery so it drives away your scowl,
When one's appetite craves turkey and will have no other fowl,
It's Thanksgiving Time!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 109

 The Ballad Of The Landlord

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?

Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'l pay you
Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?

You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.

Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
Man Threatens landlord
Tenant Held Bail
Judge GIives Negro 90 Days In County Jail!

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 110

 Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 111

 The Blues

When the shoe strings break

On both your shoes
And you're in a hurry-
That's the blues.

When you go to buy a candy bar

And you've lost the dime you had-
Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere-
That's the blues, too, and bad!

Submitted by Denice Jackson

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 112

 The City

In the morning the city

Spreads its wings
Making a song
In stone that sings.

In the evening the city

Goes to bed
Hanging lights
Above its head.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 113

 The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 114

 The Negro Mother

Children, I come back today

To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face - dark as the night -
Yet shining like the sun with love's true light.
I am the dark girl who crossed the red sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave -
Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too.
No safety, no love, no respect was I due.

Three hundred years in the deepest South:

But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth.
God put a dream like steel in my soul.
Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal.

Now, through my children, young and free,

I realized the blessing deed to me.
I couldn't read then. I couldn't write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes, the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with the sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me -
I was the seed of the coming Free.
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast - the Negro mother.
I had only hope then, but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there,
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years, heavy with sorrow -
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my pass a road to the light

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 115

 Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.
Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver's track.
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life -
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.
Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs -
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 116

 The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 117

 The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway ....
He did a lazy sway ....
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more--
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 118

 Theme For English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 119

 But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 120

 To Artina

I will take you heart.

I will take your soul out of your body
As though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 121

 To Certain

You sicken me with lies,

With truthful lies.
And with your pious faces.
And your wide, out-stretched,
mock-welcome, Christian hands.
While underneath
Is dirt and ugliness,
And rotting hearts,
And wild hyenas howling
In you soul's wasteland.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 122

 Trumpet Player

The Negro
With the trumpet at his lips
Has dark moons of weariness
Beneath his eyes
where the smoldering memory
of slave ships
Blazed to the crack of whips
about thighs

The negro
with the trumpet at his lips
has a head of vibrant hair
tamed down,
patent-leathered now
until it gleams
like jet-
were jet a crown

the music
from the trumpet at his lips
is honey
mixed with liquid fire
the rhythm
from the trumpet at his lips
is ecstasy
distilled from old desire-

Desire
that is longing for the moon
where the moonlight's but a spotlight
in his eyes,
desire
that is longing for the sea
where the sea's a bar-glass
sucker size

The Negro
with the trumpet at his lips
whose jacket

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 123

 Has a fine one-button roll,
does not know
upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle

to his soul
but softly
as the tune comes from his throat
trouble
mellows to a golden note

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 124

 Wake

Tell all my mourners

To mourn in red --
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 125

 Walkers With The Dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,

Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness--
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 126

 Warning

Negroes,
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble and kind:
Beware the day
They change their mind!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle Breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 127

 Wealth

From Christ to Ghandi

Appears this truth-
St. Francis of Assisi
Proves it, too:
Goodness becomes grandeur
Surpassing might of kings.
Halos of kindness
Brighter shine
Than crowns of gold,
And brighter
Than rich diamonds
Sparkles
The simple dew
Of love.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 128

 When Sue Wears Red

When Susanna Jones wears red

her face is like an ancient cameo
Turned brown by the ages.
Come with a blast of trumphets, Jesus!

When Susanna Jones wears red

A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night
Walks once again.
Blow trumphets, Jesus!

And the beauty of Susanna Jones in red

Burns in my heart a love-fire sharp like a pain.
Sweet silver trumphets, Jesus!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 129

 Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?

Over There,
World War II.

Dear Fellow Americans,
I write this letter
Hoping times will be better
When this war
Is through.
I'm a Tan-skinned Yank
Driving a tank.
I ask, WILL V-DAY
BE ME-DAY, TOO?

I wear a U. S. uniform.
I've done the enemy much harm,
I've driven back
The Germans and the Japs,
From Burma to the Rhine.
On every battle line,
I've dropped defeat
Into the Fascists' laps.

I am a Negro American
Out to defend my land
Army, Navy, Air Corps--
I am there.
I take munitions through,
I fight--or stevedore, too.
I face death the same as you do
Everywhere.

I've seen my buddy lying

Where he fell.
I've watched him dying
I promised him that I would try
To make our land a land
Where his son could be a man--
And there'd be no Jim Crow birds
Left in our sky.

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 130

 So this is what I want to know:
When we see Victory's glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who've waited--
Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated.
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I'm black?

Here in my own, my native land,

Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?
Will Dixie lynch me still
When I return?
Or will you comrades in arms
From the factories and the farms,
Have learned what this war
Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,

Will I be safe from harm--
Or will you do me
As the Germans did the Jews?
When I've helped this world to save,
Shall I still be color's slave?
Or will Victory change
Your antiquated views?

You can't say I didn't fight

To smash the Fascists' might.
You can't say I wasn't with you
in each battle.
As a soldier, and a friend.
When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man

At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That's all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 131

 To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?
That's what I want to know.

Sincerely,
GI Joe.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 132

 Wisdom And War

We do not care-
That much is clear.
Not enough
Of us care
Anywhere.
We are not wise-
For that reason,
Mankind dies.
To think
Is much against
The will.
Better-
And easier-
To kill.

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 133

 You and your whole race

You and your whole race.

Look down upon the town in which you live
And be ashamed.
Look down upon white folks
And upon yourselves
And be ashamed
That such supine poverty exists there,
That such stupid ignorance breeds children there
Behind such humble shelters of despair—
That you yourselves have not the sense to care
Nor the manhood to stand up and say
I dare you to come one step nearer, evil world,
With your hands of greed seeking to touch my throat,
I dare you to come one step nearer me:
When you can say that
you will be free!

Langston Hughes

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 134