Harlem Night Song by Langston Hughes

Harlem Night Song


Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.

I love you.
Across
The Harlem roof-tops
Moon is shining.
Night sky is blue.
Stars are great drops
Of golden dew.
Down the street
A band is playing.
I love you.
Come,
Let us roam the night together
Singing.

Wikipedia has a pretty decent article on Hughes. I’m a lazy enough scholar to leave the research to that body, but wanted to add how a Chinese kid growing up in 95% white eastern Washington ever got mixed up with a dead poet from Harlem. Back in grade school, all of our reading assignments came out of readers, where some editor would choose what was the best literature for us strictly based on our age. My secret: bring the book home that first day it was issued, and read it. Then, go to the university library, find out where the other readers were shelved, and read those too. So there’s a million short stories and excerpts stuck in my head — every year it seemed like Emily Dickinson’s angle-worm poem showed up (I never thought it was great). I mostly skipped the poetry section (yep, there she is again, posthumously famous, yes yes yes) until fifth grade, when for some reason Hughes’ Dreams and e.e. cummings’ in Just-spring made it into our readers. I think the editor used Dreams to illustrate simile and metaphor, and in Just-spring as something of a freakshow — lookit how he bends the rules and makes up words, what’s up with the weird spacing and lack of capitalization? That same year Mrs. Presnell handed down the edict that we’d spend an hour each day writing creatively in journals (I suppose it was a way to fill an hour that wasn’t as lazy as the past year, when the teacher would spend ten minutes writing all-day busywork assignments on the board, then retire to her desk). Ha! I have it! Poetry! Fewer words! Skipping lines! And the simple truth is that the fewer tools you have, the more each one must do — it’s not enough to rhyme, and my attempts at poetry fell into much of the remaining forgettable detrius of my life (I did discover just about all the words that rhyme with ‘art’).
How can you use so few words to make my soul resonate in tune with yours? I (and bettyandisbel) want to know.

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