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| Alice Walker reciting L. Hughes |
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| Langston Hughes |
Here are some of Margo Jefferson's favorite Hughes works.
Crossing
It was that lonely day, folks,
When I walked all by myself.
My friends was all around me
But it was as if they left.
I went up on a mountain
In a high cold wind
And the coat that I was wearing
Was mosquito-netting thin.
I went down in the valley
And I crossed an icy stream
And the water I was crossing
Was no water in a dream
And the shoes I was wearing
No protection for that stream.
Then I stood out on a prairie
And as far as I could see
Wasn't nobody on that prairie
Looked like me.
It was that lonely day, folks,
I walked all by myself:
My friends was right there with me
But was just as if they'd left.
Jazztet Muted
IN THE NEGROES OF THE QUARTER
PRESSURE OF THE BLOOD IS SLIGHTLY HIGHER
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
WHERE BLACK SHADOWS MOVE LIKE SHADOWS
CUT FROM SHADOWS CUT FROM SHADE
IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
SUDDENLY CATCHING FIRE
FROM THE WING TIP OF A MATCH TIP
ON THE BREATH OF ORNETTE COLEMAN.
IN NEON TOMBS THE MUSIC
FROM JUKEBOX JOINTS IS LAID
AND FREE-DELIVERY TV SETS
ON GRAVESTONE DATES ARE PLAYED.
EXTRA-LARGE THE KINGS AND QUEENS
AT EITHER SIDE ARRAYED
HAVE DOORS THAT OPEN OUTWARD
TO THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES
WHERE THE PRESSURE OF THE BLOOD
IS SLIGHTLY HIGHER —
DUE TO SMOLDERING SHADOWS
THAT SOMETIMES TURN TO FIRE.
HELP ME, YARDBIRD!
HELP ME!
Not What Was
By then the poetry is written
and the wild rose of the world
blooms to last so short a time
before its petals fall.
The air is music
and its melody a spiral
until it widens
beyond the tip of time
and so is lost
to poetry and the rose —
belongs instead to vastness beyond form,
to universe that nothing can contain,
to unexplored space
which sends no answers back
to fill the vase unfilled
or spread in lines
upon another page —
that anyhow was never written
because the thought could not escape
the place in which it bloomed
before the rose had gone.
All poems are from "The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes" (1994), Arnold Rampersad, editor; David Roessel, associate editor. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
