quiet — and yet a
voice forever against the
timeless walls of time
Let’s go see old Abe
Sitting in the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely in the marble and the moonlight,
Quiet for ten thousand centuries, old Abe.
Quiet for a million, million centuries.
Quiet — and yet a voice forever
Against the timeless walls of time,
Old Abe.
Lincoln Monument from Poetry. compiled from poems published between 1921 and 1928 by Langston Hughes.
wilderness of waves,
dip and dive, rise and roll, hide
a desert of waves
The sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.
Long Trip by Langston Hughes, in Poetry, compiled from poems published between 1921 and 1928.
when Carl Sandburg sings
I know a lover of all
the living sings then
In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Langston Hughes writes about his time a Cleveland Central High School:
Ethel Weimer discovered Carl Sandburg for me. Although I had read of Carl Sandburg before—in an article, I think, in the Kansas City Star about how bad free verse was—I didn’t really know him until Miss Weimer in second-year English brought him, as well as Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, to us. Then I began to try to write like Carl Sandburg.
Little Negro dialect poems like Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s and poems without rhyme like Sandburg’s were the first real poems I tried to write. I wrote about love, about the steel mills where my step-father worked, the slums where we lived, and the brown girls from the South, prancing up and down Central Avenue on a spring day.
… about Carl Sandburg, my guiding star, I wrote:
Carl Sandburg’s poems
Fall on the white pages of his books
Like blood-clots of song
From the wounds of humanity.
I know a lover of life sings
When Carl Sandburg sings.
I know a lover of all the living
Sings then
rain plays a little
sleep song on our roof at night
… and I love the rain
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf.
It’s been dry.
It’s been dry here in the Low Country of South Carolina.
One mile from the Atlantic Ocean and there isn’t enough water on the land, despite how much water is next to the land.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Low Country is Abnormally Dry but not in a drought.
And it has started to rain.
A storm has anchored itself off the coast of South Carolina and the lows and highs and storm fronts have locked this storm into place over head and it is going to rain.
It will most likely rain for the next day.
It might rain for the next two days.
It could rain for the next three days.
As you might guess, it is Memorial Day Weekend.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
We live in an ocean side resort community.
People have put a lot of time, money and effort into arranging a Memorial Day vacation at the shore.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
We live in the south of South Carolina.
Life here is designed to be lived outdoors.
Miles of beaches, acres of golf courses and very little opportunity to do anything under cover or indoors.
I think that pretty much guarantee’s rain for the next three days.
I think of the weather jokes I learned during 20 years of working in local TV news.
What do you call the day that follows two days of rain?
Monday!
By law, the seventh day of a seven day forecast is always warm and sunny. You just never get to that seventh day …
Turn a frown upside down … you get rain in your nose.
It is so true that everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.
And I can’t do anything about it.
I guarantee rain for the next three days.
So I will watch it.
So I will listen to it.
And without other options, I will love it.
Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
no clocks no shadows
dawn dusk neither light nor dark
outside door no door
There are
No clocks on the wall,
And no time,
No shadows that move
From dawn to dusk
Across the floor.
There is neither light
Nor dark
Outside the door.
There is no door!
Selected poems of Langston Hughes
by Langston Hughes, 1990, Vintage Books
