Our basic dream
Typically, here at Wordmonger, I ask you to peer into the history of a word, idioms based on it, its various meanings, or maybe the crevices between it and another word. This week, I hope you’ll consider the power of words artfully & meaningfully strung together.
Following, you’ll find an excerpt of Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again”. Please humor me. Sit up straight. Take a big, calming breath, then read these two stanzas aloud. They deserve that.
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
Interested in the rest of the poem? Check it out here.
My thanks go out to this week’s sources: poets.org & Walter Lowenfels’ The Writing on the Wall: 108 American Poems of Protest
A great poem. I saw it shared on Facebook in honor of the 4th of July. It needs to be aired more often than that, so this country can truly be "homeland of the free."
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming by Anne -- Hughes was a gem -- highly appreciated, but maybe not highly appreciated enough.
DeleteThanks for sharing this powerful poem. In one sense, it makes me ache that this was written so long ago and yet so relevant (and needed) today, and on the other hand, it's a reminder that there is still hope for us to become a true land of the free for everyone.
ReplyDeleteHey Alexis -- great to "hear" from you, & I'm with you regarding the dichotomous feelings. To think that we're still protesting the issues the Suffragettes & civil rights marchers, protested is mind-boggling. Though - in the long term - it looks as though we've made some progress, we've still got a long way to go.
DeleteI read it aloud with a quivering voice. So beautiful, so hopful, true and sad at the same time. Thank you for sharing this. Now I think I will re-read and ponder it a bit.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Christine, for reading it aloud. So often we don't remember that poetry that's good on the page can be stunning in the air.
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