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
"’The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ is perhaps the most profound of these poems of heritage and strength. Composed when Hughes was a mere 17 years old, and dedicated to W. E. B. DuBois, it is a sonorous evocation of transcendent essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer than human memory. The rivers are part of God's body, and participate in his immortality. They are the earthly analogues of eternity: deep, continuous, mysterious. They are named in the order of their association with black history. The black man has drunk of their life-giving essences, and thereby borrowed their immortality. He and the rivers have become one.”
- Onwuchekwa Jemie
Read more about Hughes, his life and works here:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83 I was in the 10the grade at Dunbar High School in DC when I really became aware of Langston Hughes. I say “really,” because even though I had learned about him before then, I had to memorize this poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” for a class presentation we were giving on black poetry, and it made me think about it and what Hughes was saying. The idea that someone a year older than I was at the time could see this deeply and broadly about the history of our people, and then be able to express it in a poem like this was just phenomenal. I’ve been a fan of Hughes ever since.
As Huges said, "my motto as I live and learn is to dig and be dug, in return."
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Sunday, June 13th 2010 at 12:25PM
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