RIVERS

Poem for Today - February 17, 2014
Continuing Black History Month

THE NEGRO SPEAKS  OF RIVERS 

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the worId

and oIder than the flow of

       human bIood 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.

                                      - Langston Hughes  ©

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by by Langston Hughes: Copyright 1926 by Alred A. Knopf. Inc., and renewed 1954 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted from Selected Poems by Langston Hughes, by permission of the publisher.