Today would have been Langston Hughes’ 118th birthday. Some of my Hughes books are in my [work] office; others are unfortunately buried in one of my many unpacked boxes, so I didn’t have the pleasure of revisiting my precious books and slowly inhaling the pages.
Like so many other Black poets, I fell in love with Langston Hughes through the books on my older siblings’ bookshelves. I took a course focusing on Hughes in graduate school and was sorely disappointed by the instructor’s style. He was knowledgeable but not an effective facilitator. He missed Hughes’ brilliance in his focus on the “celebrity” and ambiguity of Hughes.
I accidentally shot the “abstract” photo this morning while finishing up a letter to a friend. It pairs well with the closing lines of Hughes’ poem, “As I Grew Older.”
It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!–Langston Hughes, “As I Grew Older”
Many read this poem and see disillusionment. The speaker of the poem dismisses the idealism and replaces it with the realization that in America his Blackness stands as a barrier to his dream. However, there is hope here too…He has “almost forgotten” the dream, but he recognizes that thick walls of racism can be breached, toppled even, by his dark hands.
Moreover…
Dark hands united with other hands can “shatter the darkness…into a thousand whirling dreams of sun.”
Pics and Posts 
One of the greats! (Also, I remember a cool bookstore in DC — Busboys and Poets — specifically named in honor of Hughes’s busboy period before he took off as a poet. You should go there 🙂 )
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Oh yes!!! Definitely when I’m in DC again!!!
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I love this! I love Hughes’s poetry and have since I was a little girl. Thank you so much for sharing this poem.
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Yay! I’m so glad you love him. I’m going to have to dig my books out of whatever box they’re in. I thought I had some of his works in my office, but I’m there now and don’t see any of them. Insert cry face.
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I was just looking through a book Kurt Weill’s music that someone lent me. You know Weill? Wrote the music for Mack the Knife, among many other things? A few songs were from “Street Scenes” and the lyrics were by Langston Hughes. (You knew I’d get around to Hughes eventually, I hope.) I didn’t know they worked together and I don’t know the play at all, or whether Hughes wrote the book for it. Do you know it?
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I am familiar with it, but I’m not sure I’ve ever really listened to the opera (I think it’s an opera???). But it’s been a while and there’s a lot crammed into my noggin. 🙂 .
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That puts you several steps ahead of me. I should see if I can’t find it on YouTube–along with every other sound on the planet.
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Right! YouTube has EVERYTHING, it seems.
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So powerful. In this poem I think of him as a strong wave rising and smashing down barriers. The poem erupts with his energy. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks for enjoying!
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