VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1990
Copyright © 1959 by Langston Hughes
Copyright renewed 1987 by George Houston Bass, Surviving Executor of the Estate of Langston Hughes, Deceased
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1959.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967.
[Poems. Selections]
Selected poems of Langston Hughes
p. cm. —(Vintage classics)
eISBN: 978-0-307-94940-0
I. Title II. Series.
PS3515.U274A6 1990 90-50179
811’.52—dc20
Display typography by Stephanie Bart-Horvath
v3.1
To my cousin, Flora
This book contains a selection of the poems of Langston Hughes chosen by himself from his earlier volumes:
THE WEARY BLUES
FINE CLOTHES TO THE JEW
SHAKESPEARE IN HARLEM
FIELDS OF WONDER
ONE-WAY TICKET
MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED
and from the privately printed limited edition
DEAR LOVELY DEATH
together with a number of new poems published here for the first time in book form, some never before anywhere.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
AFRO-AMERICAN FRAGMENTS
Afro-American Fragment
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Sun Song
Aunt Sue’s Stories
Danse Africaine
Negro
American Heartbreak
October 16
As I Grew Older
My People
Dream Variations
FEET OF JESUS
Feet o’ Jesus
Prayer
Shout
Fire
Sunday Morning Prophecy
Sinner
Litany
Angels Wings
Judgment Day
Prayer Meeting
Spirituals
Tambourines
SHADOW OF THE BLUES
The Weary Blues
Hope
Late Last Night
Bad Morning
Sylvester’s Dying Bed
Wake
Could Be
Bad Luck Card
Reverie on the Harlem River
Morning After
Early Evening Quarrel
Evil
As Befits a Man
SEA AND LAND
Havana Dreams
Catch
Water-Front Streets
Long Trip
Seascape
Moonlight Night: Carmel
Heaven
In Time of Silver Rain
Joy
Winter Moon
Snail
March Moon
Harlem Night Song
To Artina
Fulfilment
Gypsy Melodies
Mexican Market Woman
A Black Pierrot
Ardella
When Sue Wears Red
Love
Beale Street
Port Town
Natcha
Young Sailor
Sea Calm
Dream Dust
No Regrets
Troubled Woman
Island
DISTANCE NOWHERE
Border Line
Garden
Genius Child
Strange Hurt
Suicide’s Note
End
Drum
Personal
Juliet
Desire
Vagabonds
One
Desert
A House in Taos
Demand
Dream
Night: Four Songs
Luck
Old Walt
Kid in the Park
Song for Billie Holiday
Fantasy in Purple
AFTER HOURS
Midnight Raffle
What?
Gone Boy
50–50
Maybe
Lover’s Return
Miss Blues’es Child
Trumpet Player
Monroe’s Blues
Stony Lonesome
Black Maria
LIFE IS FINE
Life Is Fine
Still Here
Ballad of the Gypsy
Me and the Mule
Kid Sleepy
Little Lyric
Fired
Midnight Dancer
Blue Monday
Ennui
Mama and Daughter
Delinquent
S-sss-ss-sh!
Homecoming
Final Curve
Little Green Tree
Crossing
Widow Woman
LAMENT OVER LOVE
Misery
Ballad of the Fortune Teller
Cora
Down and Out
Young Gal’s Blues
Ballad of the Girl Whose Name Is Mud
Hard Daddy
Midwinter Blues
Little Old Letter
Lament over Love
MAGNOLIA FLOWERS
Daybreak in Alabama
Cross
Magnolia Flowers
Mulatto
Southern Mammy Sings
Ku Klux
West Texas
Share-Croppers
Ruby Brown
Roland Hayes Beaten
Uncle Tom
Porter
Blue Bayou
Silhouette
Song for a Dark Girl
The South
Bound No’th Blues
NAME IN UPHILL LETTERS
One-Way Ticket
Migrant
Summer Evening
Graduation
Interne at Provident
Railroad Avenue
Mother to Son
Stars
To Be Somebody
Note on Commercial Theatre
Puzzled
Seashore through Dark Glasses
Baby
Merry-Go-Round
Elevator Boy
Who But the Lord?
Third Degree
Ballad of the Man Who’s Gone
MADAM TO YOU
Madam’s Past History
Madam and Her Madam
Madam’s Calling Cards
Madam and the Rent Man
Madam and the Number Writer
Madam and the Phone Bill
Madam and the Charity Child
Madam and the Fortune Teller
Madam and the Wrong Visitor
Madam and the Minister
Madam and Her Might-Have-Been
Madam and the Census Man
MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED
Montage of a Dream Deferred
WORDS LIKE FREEDOM
I, Too
Freedom Train
Georgia Dusk
Lunch in a Jim Crow Car
In Explanation of Our Times
Africa
Democracy
Consider Me
The Negro Mother
Refugee in America
Freedom’s Plow
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
AFRO-
AMERICAN
FRAGMENTS
Afro-American Fragment
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Not even memories alive
Save those that history books create,
Save those that songs
Beat back into the blood—
Beat out of blood with words sad-sung
In strange un-Negro tongue—
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Subdued and time-lost
Are the drums—and yet
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand,
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearnings lost
Without a place—
So long,
So far away
Is Africa’s
Dark face.
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.
Sun Song
Sun and softness,
Sun and the beaten hardness of the earth,
Sun and the song of all the sun-stars
Gathered together—
Dark ones of Africa,
I bring you my songs
To sing on the Georgia roads.
Aunt Sue’s Stories
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.
Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of old Aunt Sue’s voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue’s stories.
And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue’s stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
Out of any book at all,
But that they came
Right out of her own life.
The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue’s stories.
Danse Africaine
The low beating of the tom-toms,
The slow beating of the tom-toms,
Low … slow
Slow … low—
Stirs your blood.
Dance!
A night-veiled girl
Whirls softly into a
Circle of light.
Whirls softly … slowly,
Like a wisp of smoke around the fire—
And the tom-toms beat,
And the tom-toms beat,
And the low beating of the tom-toms
Stirs your blood.
Negro
I am a Negro:
Black as the night is black,
Black like the depths of my Africa.
I’ve been a slave:
Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean.
I brushed the boots of Washington.
I’ve been a worker:
Under my hand the pyramids arose.
I made mortar for the Woolworth Building.
I’ve been a singer:
All the way from Africa to Georgia
I carried my sorrow songs.
I made ragtime.
I’ve been a victim:
The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo.
They lynch me still in Mississippi.
I am a Negro:
Black as the night is black,
Black like the depths of my Africa.
American Heartbreak
I am the American heartbreak—
Rock on which Freedom
Stumps its toe—
The great mistake
That Jamestown
Made long ago.
October 16
Perhaps
You will remember
John Brown.
John Brown
Who took his gun,
Took twenty-one companions
White and black,
Went to shoot your way to freedom
Where two rivers meet
And the hills of the
North
And the hills of the
South
Look slow at one another—
And died
For your sake.
Now that you are
Many years free,
And the echo of the Civil War
Has passed away,
And Brown himself
Has long been tried at law,
Hanged by the neck,
And buried in the ground—
Since Harpers Ferry
Is alive with ghosts today,
Immortal raiders
Come again to town—
Perhaps
You will recall
John Brown.
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 slowly, slowly,
Dimming,
Hiding,
The light of 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!
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.
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.
FEET
OF
JESUS
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.
Prayer
I ask you this:
Which way to go?
I ask you this:
Which sin to bear?
Which crown to put
Upon my hair?
I do not know,
Lord God,
I do not know.
Shout
Listen to yo’ prophets,
Little Jesus!
Listen to yo’ saints!
Fire
Fire,
Fire, Lord!
Fire gonna burn ma soul!
I ain’t been good,
I ain’t been clean—
I been stinkin’, low-down, mean.
Fire,
Fire, Lord!
Fire gonna burn ma soul!
Tell me, brother,
Do you believe
If you wanta go to heaben
Got to moan an’ grieve?
Fire,
Fire, Lord!
Fire gonna burn ma soul!
I been stealin’,
Been tellin’ lies,
Had more women
Than Pharaoh had wives.
Fire,
Fire, Lord!
Fire gonna burn ma soul!
I means Fire, Lord!
Fire gonna burn ma soul!
Sunday Morning Prophecy
An old Negro minister concludes his sermon in his loudest voice, having previously pointed out the sins of this world:
… and now
When the rumble of death
Rushes down the drain
Pipe of eternity,
And hell breaks out
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes Page 1
