Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (12 page)

    
He ain’t smart
.

    
That cat’s a fool
.

Naw, he ain’t neither.

He’s a good man,

except that he talks too much.

In fact, he’s a great cat.

But when he drinks,

he drinks fast.

    
Sometimes

    
he don’t drink
.

True,

he just

lets his glass

set there.

A woman standing in the doorway

Trying to make her where-with-all:

Come here, baby, darlin’!

Don’t you hear me call?

If I was anybody’s sister,

I’d tell her, Gimme a place to sleep
.

But I ain’t nobody’s sister.

I’m just a poor lost sheep.

Mary, Mary, Mary,

Had a little lamb.

Well, I hope that lamb of Mary’s

Don’t turn out like I am.

Shadow faces

In the shadow night

Before the early dawn

Bops bright.

There’s been an eagle on a nickel,

An eagle on a quarter, too.

But there ain’t no eagle

On a dime.

They worshipped Joe.

A school teacher

whose hair was gray

said:

    
Joe has sense enough to know

    
He is a god
.

    
So many gods don’t know
.

“They say”…“They say”…“They say”…

But the gossips had no

“They say”

to latch onto

for Joe.

Mingled

breath and smell

so close

mingled

black and white

so near

no room for fear.

We’re related—you and I,

You from the West Indies,

I from Kentucky.

Kinsmen—you and I,

You from Africa,

I from the U.S.A.

Brothers—you and I.

The Jews:

    Groceries

    Suits

    Fruits

    Watches

    Diamond rings

    THE DAILY NEWS

Jews sell me things.

Yom Kippur, no!

Shops all over Harlem

close up tight that night.

Some folks blame high prices on the Jews.

(Some folks blame too much on Jews.)

But in Harlem they don’t answer back,

Just maybe shrug their shoulders,

“What’s the use?”

What’s the use

in Harlem?

What’s the use?

What’s the Harlem

use in Harlem

what’s the lick?

Hey!

Baba-re-bop!

Mop!

On a be-bop kick!

Sometimes I think

Jews must have heard

the music of a

dream deferred.

Cheap little rhymes

A cheap little tune

Are sometimes as dangerous

As a sliver of the moon.

A cheap little tune

To cheap little rhymes

Can cut a man’s

Throat sometimes.

He rose up on his dying bed

and asked for fish.

His wife looked it up in her dream book

and played it.

Tinkling treble,

Rolling bass,

High noon teeth

In a midnight face,

Great long fingers

On great big hands,

Screaming pedals

Where his twelve-shoe lands,

Looks like his eyes

Are teasing pain,

A few minutes late

For the Freedom Train.

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?

Good morning, daddy!

I was born here, he said,

watched Harlem grow

until colored folks spread

from river to river

across the middle of Manhattan

out of Penn Station

dark tenth of a nation,

planes from Puerto Rico,

and holds of boats, chico,

up from Cuba Haiti Jamaica,

in buses marked New York

from Georgia Florida Louisiana

to Harlem Brooklyn the Bronx

but most of all to Harlem

dusky sash across Manhattan

I’ve seen them come dark

    wondering

    wide-eyed

    dreaming

out of Penn Station—

but the trains are late.

The gates open—

Yet there’re bars

at each gate.

    What happens

    to a dream deferred?

Daddy, ain’t you heard?

I said to my baby,

Baby, take it slow.

I can’t, she said, I can’t!

I got to go!

    
There’s a certain

    
amount of traveling

    
in a dream deferred
.

Lulu said to Leonard,

I want a diamond ring.

Leonard said to Lulu,

You won’t get a goddamn thing!

    
A certain

    
amount of nothing

    
in a dream deferred
.

Daddy, daddy, daddy,

All I want is you.

You can have me, baby—

but my lovin’ days is through.

    
A certain

    
amount of impotence

    
in a dream deferred
.

Three parties

On my party line—

But that third party,

Lord, ain’t mine!

    
There’s liable

    
to be confusion

    
in a dream deferred
.

From river to river,

Uptown and down,

There’s liable to be confusion

when a dream gets kicked around.

You talk like

they don’t kick

dreams around

downtown.

    
I expect they do—

    
But I’m talking about

    
Harlem to you!

Dear Mama
,

    
Time I pay rent and get my food

and laundry I don’t hare much left

but here is five dollars for you

to show you I still appreciates you
.

My girl-friend send her love and say

she hopes to lay eyes on you sometime in life
.

Mama, it has been raining cats and dogs up

here. Well, that is all so I will close
.

               
Your son baby

                         
Respectably as ever
,

                                        
Joe

Between two rivers,

North of the park,

Like darker rivers

The streets are dark.

Black and white,

Gold and brown—

Chocolate-custard

Pie of a town.

Dream within a dream
,

Our dream deferred
.

Good morning, daddy!

Ain’t you heard?

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.

               I read in the papers about the

                         Freedom Train.

               I heard on the radio about the

                         Freedom Train.

               I seen folks talkin’ about the

                         Freedom Train.

               Lord, I been a-waitin’ for the

                         Freedom Train!

Down South in Dixie only train I see’s

Got a Jim Crow car set aside for me.

I hope there ain’t no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train,

No back door entrance to the Freedom Train,

No signs FOR COLORED on the Freedom Train,

No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train.

               I’m gonna check up on this

                         Freedom Train.

Who’s the engineer on the Freedom Train?

Can a coal black man drive the Freedom Train?

Or am I still a porter on the Freedom Train?

Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train?

When it stops in Mississippi will it be made plain

Everybody’s got a right to board the Freedom Train?

               Somebody tell me about this

                         Freedom Train!

The Birmingham station’s marked COLORED and WHITE.

The white folks go left, the colored go right—

They even got a segregated lane.

Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train?

               
I got to know about this

                         Freedom Train!

If my children ask me,
Daddy, please explain

Why there’s Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train?

What shall I tell my children? … 
You
tell me—

’Cause freedom ain’t freedom when a man ain’t free.

               But maybe they explains it on the

                         Freedom Train.

When my grandmother in Atlanta, 83 and black,

Gets in line to see the Freedom,

Will some white man yell,
Get back!

A Negro’s got no business on the Freedom Track!

               Mister, I thought it were the

                         Freedom Train!

Her grandson’s name was Jimmy. He died at Anzio.

He died for real. It warn’t no show.

The freedom that they carryin’ on this Freedom Train,

Is it for real—or just a show again?

               Jimmy wants to know about the

                         Freedom Train.

Will
his
Freedom Train come zoomin’ down the track

Gleamin’ in the sunlight for white and black?

Not stoppin’ at no stations marked COLORED nor WHITE,

Just stoppin’ in the fields in the broad daylight,

Stoppin’ in the country in the wide-open air

Where there never was no Jim Crow signs nowhere,

No Welcomin’ Committees, nor politicians of note,

No Mayors and such for which colored can’t vote,

And nary a sign of a color line—

For the Freedom Train will be yours and mine!

Then maybe from their graves in Anzio

The G.I.’s who fought will say,
We wanted it so!

Black men and white will say,
Ain’t it fine?

At home they got a train that’s yours and mine!

               Then I’ll shout,
Glory for the

                         
Freedom Train!

               
I’ll holler, Blow your whistle
,

                         
Freedom Train!

               
Thank God-A-Mighty! Here’s the

                         
Freedom Train!

               
Get on board our Freedom Train!

Sometimes there’s a wind in the Georgia dusk

That cries and cries and cries

Its lonely pity through the Georgia dusk

Veiling what the darkness hides.

Sometimes there’s blood in the Georgia dusk,

Left by a streak of sun,

A crimson trickle in the Georgia dusk.

Whose blood? … Everyone’s.

Sometimes a wind in the Georgia dusk

Scatters hate like seed

To sprout its bitter barriers

Where the sunsets bleed.

Get out the lunch-box of your dreams.

Bite into the sandwich of your heart,

And ride the Jim Crow car until it screams

Then—like an atom bomb—it bursts apart.

The folks with no titles in front of their names

all over the world

are raring up and talking back

to the folks called Mister.

You say you thought everybody was called Mister?

No, son, not everybody.

In Dixie, often they won’t call Negroes Mister.

In China before what happened

They had no intention of calling coolies Mister.

Dixie to Singapore, Cape Town to Hong Kong

the Misters won’t call lots of other folks Mister.

They call them, Hey George!

                         Here, Sallie!

                         Listen, Coolie!

                         Hurry up, Boy!

                         And things like that.