Langston Hughes: “Montage of a Dream Deferred”
Posted: February 1, 2013 Filed under: English, English: Black Canadian / American, Langston Hughes | Tags: Black History Month poems Comments Off on Langston Hughes: “Montage of a Dream Deferred”
Langston Hughes (born February 1st 1902, died 1967)
“Montage of a Dream Deferred” (1951): a selection of poems
.
“Children’s Rhymes”
.
When I was a chile we used to play,
“One – two – buckle my shoe!”
and things like that. But now, Lord,
listen at them little varmints!
.
By what sends
the white kids
I ain’t sent:
I know I can’t
be President.
.
There is two thousand children
In this block, I do believe!
.
What don’t bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We knows everybody
ain’t free!
.
Some of these young ones is cert’ly bad –
One batted a hard ball right through my window
And my gold fish et the glass.
.
What’s written down
for white folks
ain’t for us a-tall:
“Liberty And Justice –
Huh – For All.”
.
Oop-pop-a-da!
Skee! Daddle-de-do!
Be-bop!
.
Salt’ peanuts!
.
De-dop!
. . .
“Necessity”
.
Work?
I don’t have to work.
I don’t have to do nothing
but eat, drink, stay black, and die.
This little old furnished room’s
so small I can’t whip a cat
without getting fur in my mouth
and my landlady’s so old
her features is all run together
and God knows she sure can overcharge –
which is why I reckon I does
have to work after all.
. . .
“Question (2)”
.
Said the lady, Can you do
what my other man can’t do –
that is
love me, daddy –
and feed me, too?
.
Figurine
.
De-dop!
. . .
“Easy Boogie”
.
Down in the bass
That steady beat
Walking walking walking
Like marching feet.
.
Down in the bass
That 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!
. . .
“What? So Soon!”
.
I believe my old lady’s
pregnant again!
Fate must have
some kind of trickeration
to populate the
cllud nation!
Comment against Lamp Post
You call it fate?
Figurette
De-daddle-dy!
De-dop!
. . .
“Tomorrow”
.
Tomorrow may be
a thousand years off:
TWO DIMES AND A NICKEL ONLY
Says this particular
cigarette machine.
.
Others take a quarter straight.
.
Some dawns
wait.
. . .
“Café: 3 a.m.”
.
Detectives from the vice squad
with weary sadistic eyes
spotting fairies.
Degenerates,
some folks say.
.
But God, Nature,
or somebody
made them that way.
Police lady or Lesbian
over there?
Where?
. . .
“125th Street”
.
Face like a chocolate bar
full of nuts and sweet.
.
Face like a jack-o’-lantern,
candle inside.
.
Face like a slice of melon,
grin that wide.
. . .
“Up-Beat”
.
In the gutter
boys who try
might meet girls
on the fly
as out of the gutter
girls who will
may meet boys
copping a thrill
while from the gutter
both can rise:
But it requires
Plenty eyes.
“Mystery”
.
When a chile gets to be thirteen
and ain’t seen Christ yet,
she needs to set on de moaner’s bench
night and day.
.
Jesus, lover of my soul!
.
Hail, Mary, mother of God!
.
Let me to thy bosom fly!
.
Amen! Hallelujah!
.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
.
Sunday morning where the rhythm flows,
How old nobody knows –
yet old as mystery,
older than creed,
basic and wondering
and lost as my need.
.
Eli, eli!
Te deum!
Mahomet!
Christ!
.
Father Bishop, Effendi, Mother Horne,
Father Divine, a Rabbi black
as black was born,
a jack-leg preacher, a Ph.D.
.
The mystery
and the darkness
and the song
and me.
. . .
“Nightmare Boogie”
.
I had a dream
and I could see
a million faces
black as me!
A nightmare dream:
Quicker than light
All them faces
Turned dead white!
Boogie-woogie,
Rolling bass,
Whirling treble
Of cat-gut lace.
. . .
“Blues at Dawn”
.
I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.
I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.
If I thought thoughts in bed,
Them thoughts would bust my head –
So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.
.
I don’t dare remember in the morning
Don’t dare remember in the morning.
If I recall the day before,
I wouldn’t get up no more –
So I don’t dare remember in the morning.
. . .
“Neighbour”
.
Down home
he sets on a stoop
and watches the sun go by.
In Harlem
when his work is done
he sets in a bar with a beer.
He looks taller than he is
and younger than he ain’t.
He looks darker than he is, too.
And he’s smarter than he looks,
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.
. . .
“Subway Rush Hour”
.
Mingled
breath and smell
so close
mingled
black and white
so near
no room for fear.
. . .
“Brothers”
.
We’re related – you and I,
You from the West Indies,
I from Kentucky.
.
Kinsmen – you and I,
You from Africa,
I from U.S.A.
.
Brothers – you and I.
. . .
“Sliver”
.
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.
. . .
“Hope (2)”
.
He rose up on his dying bed
and asked for fish.
His wife looked it up in her dream book
and played it.
. . .
“Harlem (2)”
.
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?
. . .
“Letter”
.
Dear Mama,
Time I pay rent and get my food
and laundry I don’t have 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.
You son baby
Respectably as ever,
Joe
. . .
“Motto”
.
I play it cool
And dig all jive.
That’s the reason
I stay alive.
.
My motto,
As I live and learn,
Is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return.
. . . . .
From Hughes’ introduction to his 1951 collection “Montage of a Dream Deferred”:
“In terms of current Afro-American popular music and the sources from which it has progressed – jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-bop – this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of the jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and distortions of the music of a community in transition.”
Editor’s note:
Langston Hughes’ poems “Theme for English B” and “Advice” – both of which were included in his publication of “Montage of a Dream Deferred” – are featured in separate Hughes’ posts on Zócalo Poets.
. . . . .
“Montage of a Dream Deferred”- from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad, with David Roessel, 1994
All poems © The Estate of Langston Hughes
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