Langston Hughes (1 February 1902 – 22 May 1967 / Missouri)

''I was so sick last night I
Didn't hardly know my mind.
So sick last night I
Didn't know my mind.
I drunk some bad licker that
Almost made me blind.''

''Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.''

''Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.''

''I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.''

''here
to this college on the hill above Harlem
I am the only colored student in my class.''

''So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.''

''As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you're older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.''

''I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.''

''The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.''

''Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light''