The Panther and the Lash Read online

  BOOKS BY Langston Hughes

  POETRY

  THE PANTHER AND THE LASH (1967)

  ASK YOUR MAMA (1961)

  SELECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES (1958)

  MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED (1951)

  ONE-WAY TICKET (1949)

  FIELDS OF WONDER (1947)

  SHAKESPEARE IN HARLEM (1942)

  THE DREAM-KEEPER (1932)

  FINE CLOTHES TO THE JEW (1927)

  THE WEARY BLUES (1926)

  FICTION

  FIVE PLAYS BY LANGSTON HUGHES (1963)

  SOMETHING IN COMMON AND OTHER STORIES (1963)

  THE SWEET FLYPAPER OF LIFE (1955)

  LAUGHING TO KEEP FROM CRYING (1952)

  THE WAYS OF WHITE FOLKS (1934)

  NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER (1930)

  HUMOR

  SIMPLE’S UNCLE SAM (1965)

  BEST OF SIMPLE (1961)

  SIMPLE STAKES A CLAIM (1957)

  SIMPLE TAKES A WIFE (1953)

  SIMPLE SPEAKS HIS MIND (1950)

  FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

  FIRST BOOK OF AFRICA (1964)

  THE FIRST BOOK OF THE WEST INDIES (1956)

  THE FIRST BOOK OF RHYTHMS (1954)

  THE FIRST BOOK OF JAZZ (1954)

  THE FIRST BOOK OF THE NEGROES (1952)

  —with Arna Bontemps

  POPO AND FIFINA (1932)

  BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  FAMOUS NEGRO HEROES OF AMERICA (1958)

  I WONDER AS I WANDER (1956)

  FAMOUS NEGRO MUSIC-MAKERS (1955)

  FAMOUS AMERICAN NEGROES (1954)

  THE BIG SEA (1940)

  ANTHOLOGY

  THE LANGSTON HUGHES READER (1958)

  HISTORY

  —with Milton Meltzer

  BLACK MAGIC: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN ENTERTAINMENT (1967)

  FIGHT FOR FREEDOM: THE STORY OF THE NAACP (1962)

  —with Milton Meltzer

  A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA (1956)

  Copyright © 1967 by Arna Bontemps and George Houston Bass, Executors of the Estate of Langston Hughes.

  Copyright 1932, 1934, 1942, 1947, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1956, © 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, by Langston Hughes. Copyright 1942, 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  Copyright renewed 1970, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1991 by Arna Bontemps and George Houston Bass.

  Copyright renewed 1960, 1962 by Langston Hughes.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. This edition first published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1967.

  Certain poems in this collection were previously published in the following books by Langston Hughes:

  Ask Your Mama (1961): “Cultural Exchange”

  Fields of Wonder (1947): “Words Like Freedom,” “Oppression,” “Dream Dust”

  The Langston Hughes Reader (1958): “Elderly Leaders” under the title “Elderly Politicians”

  Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951): “Corner Meeting,” “Motto,” “Children’s Rhymes”

  One-Way Ticket (1949): “Harlem” under the title “Puzzled,” “Who But the Lord?,” “Third Degree,” “October 16: The Raid,” “Still Here,” “Florida Road Workers,” “Freedom” under the title “Democracy?,” “Warning” under the title “Roland Hayes Beaten,” “Daybreak in Alabama”

  Scottsboro Limited (1932): “Christ in Alabama,” “Justice”

  Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (1959): “Dream Deferred” under the title “Harlem,” “American Heartbreak” “Georgia Dusk,” “Jim Crow Car” under the title “Lunch in a Jim Crow Car”

  Shakespeare in Harlem (1942): “Ku Klux,” “Merry-Go-Round”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967.

  The panther & the lash : poems of our times / Langston Hughes. —

  1st Vintage classics ed.

  p. cm. — (Vintage classics)

  eISBN: 978-0-307-94939-4

  1. Afro-Americans—Poetry. I. Title. II. Title: Panther and the lash. III. Series.

  PS3515.U274P3 1992

  811′.52—dc20 91-50087

  B9876

  v3.1

  To Rosa Parks of Montgomery

  who started it all when, on being ordered to get up and stand at the back of the bus where there were no seats left, she said simply, “My feet are tired,” and did not move, thus setting off in 1955 the boycotts, the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the petitions, the marches, the voter registration drives, and I Shall Not Be Moved.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 WORDS ON FIRE

  Corner Meeting

  Harlem

  Prime

  Crowns and Garlands

  Elderly Leaders

  The Backlash Blues

  Lenox Avenue Bar

  Motto

  Junior Addict

  Dream Deferred

  Death In Yorkville

  Who But The Lord?

  Third Degree

  Black Panther

  Final Call

  2 AMERICAN HEARTBREAK

  American Heartbreak

  Ghosts of 1619

  October 16: The Raid

  Long View: Negro

  Frederick Douglass: 1817–1895

  Still Here

  Words Like Freedom

  3 THE BIBLE BELT

  Christ in Alabama

  Bible Belt

  Militant

  Office Building: Evening

  Florida Road Workers

  Special Bulletin

  Mississippi

  Ku Klux

  Justice

  Birmingham Sunday

  Bombings in Dixie

  Children’s Rhymes

  Down Where I Am

  4 THE FACE OF WAR

  Mother in Wartime

  Without Benefit of Declaration

  Official Notice

  Peace

  Last Prince of the East

  The Dove

  War

  5 AFRICAN QUESTION MARK

  Oppression

  Angola Question Mark

  Lumumba’s Grave

  Color

  Question and Answer

  History

  6 DINNER GUEST: ME

  Dinner Guest: Me

  Northern Liberal

  Sweet Words on Race

  Un-American Investigators

  Slave

  Undertow

  Little Song on Housing

  Cultural Exchange

  Frosting

  Impasse

  7 DAYBREAK IN ALABAMA

  Freedom

  Go Slow

  Merry-Go-Round

  Dream Dust

  Stokely Malcolm Me

  Slum Dreams

  Georgia Dusk

  Where? When? Which?

  Vari-Colored Song

  Jim Crow Car

  Warning

  Daybreak in Alabama

  About The Author

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  1

  WORDS ON FIRE

  CORNER MEETING

  Ladder, flag, and amplifier

  now are what the soap box

  used to be.

  The speaker catches fire,

  looking at listeners’ faces.

  His words jump down

  to stand


  in their

  places.

  HARLEM

  Here on the edge of hell

  Stands Harlem—

  Remembering the old lies,

  The old kicks in the back,

  The old “Be patient”

  They told us before.

  Sure, we remember.

  Now when the man at the corner store

  Says sugar’s gone up another two cents,

  And bread one,

  And there’s a new tax on cigarettes—

  We remember the job we never had,

  Never could get,

  And can’t have now

  Because we’re colored.

  So we stand here

  On the edge of hell

  In Harlem

  And look out on the world

  And wonder

  What we’re gonna do

  In the face of what

  We remember.

  PRIME

  Uptown on Lenox Avenue

  Where a nickel costs a dime,

  In these lush and thieving days

  When million-dollar thieves

  Glorify their million-dollar ways

  In the press and on the radio and TV—

        But won’t let me

        Skim even a dime—

  I, black, come to my prime

  In the section of the niggers

  Where a nickel costs a dime.

  CROWNS AND GARLANDS

  Make a garland of Leontynes and Lenas

  And hang it about your neck

        Like a lei.

  Make a crown of Sammys, Sidneys, Harrys,

  Plus Cassius Mohammed Ali Clay.

  Put their laurels on your brow

        Today—

  Then before you can walk

  To the neighborhood corner,

  Watch them droop, wilt, fade

        Away.

  Though worn in glory on my head,

  They do not last a day—

        Not one—

  Nor take the place of meat or bread

  Or rent that I must pay.

  Great names for crowns and garlands!

        Yeah!

  I love Ralph Bunche—

  But I can’t eat him for lunch.

  ELDERLY LEADERS

  The old, the cautious, the over-wise—

  Wisdom reduced to the personal equation:

  Life is a system of half-truths and lies,

  Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

        Elderly,

        Famous,

        Very well paid,

        They clutch at the egg

        Their master’s

        Goose laid:

        $$$$$

        $$$$

        $$$

        $$

        $

        •

  THE BACKLASH BLUES

  Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,

  Just who do you think I am?

  Tell me, Mister Backlash,

  Who do you think I am?

  You raise my taxes, freeze my wages,

  Send my son to Vietnam.

  You give me second-class houses,

  Give me second-class schools,

  Second-class houses

  And second-class schools.

  You must think us colored folks

  Are second-class fools.

  When I try to find a job

  To earn a little cash,

  Try to find myself a job

  To earn a little cash,

  All you got to offer

  Is a white backlash.

  But the world is big,

  The world is big and round,

  Great big world, Mister Backlash,

  Big and bright and round—

  And it’s full of folks like me who are

  Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown.

  Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,

  What do you think I got to lose?

  Tell me, Mister Backlash,

  What you think I got to lose?

  I’m gonna leave you, Mister Backlash,

  Singing your mean old backlash blues.

                 You’re the one,

                 Yes, you’re the one

                 Will have the blues.

  LENOX AVENUE BAR

  Weaving

  between assorted terrors

  is the Jew

  who owns the place—

  one Jew,

  fifty Negroes:

  embroideries

  (heirloomed

  from ancient evenings)

  tattered

  in this neon

  place.

  MOTTO

  I play it cool

  And dig all jive—

  That’s the reason

  I stay alive.

  My motto,

  As I live and learn

                Is

  Dig and be dug

  In return.

  JUNIOR ADDICT

  The little boy

  who sticks a needle in his arm

  and seeks an out in other worldly dreams,

  who seeks an out in eyes that droop

  and ears that close to Harlem screams,

  cannot know, of course,

  (and has no way to understand)

  a sunrise that he cannot see

  beginning in some other land—

  but destined sure to flood—and soon—

  the very room in which he leaves

  his needle and his spoon,

  the very room in which today the air

  is heavy with the drug

  of his despair.

        (Yet little can

        tomorrow’s sunshine give

        to one who will not live.)

  Quick, sunrise, come—

  Before the mushroom bomb

  Pollutes his stinking air

  With better death

  Than is his living here,

  With viler drugs

  Than bring today’s release

  In poison from the fallout

  Of our peace.

        “It’s easier to get dope

        than it is to get a job.”

  Yes, easier to get dope

  than to get a job—

  daytime or nightime job,

  teen-age, pre-draft,

  pre-lifetime job.

  Quick, sunrise, come!

  Sunrise out of Africa,

  Quick, come!

  Sunrise, please come!

  Come! Come!

  DREAM DEFERRED

  What happens to a dream deferred?

        Does it dry up

        like a raisin in the sun?

        Or fester like a sore—

        And then run?

        Does it stink like rotten meat?

        Or crust and sugar over—

        like a syrupy sweet?

        Maybe it just sags

        like a heavy load.

        Or does it explode?

  DEATH IN YORKVILLE

  (Jamas Powell, Summer, 1964)

  How many bullets does it take

  To kill a fifteen-year-old kid?

  How many bullets does it take

  To kill me?

  How many centuries does it take

  To bind my mind—chain my feet—

  Rope my neck—lynch me—

  Unfree?

  From the slave chain to the lyn
ch rope

  To the bullets of Yorkville,

  Jamestown, 1619 to 1963:

  Emancipation Centennial—

  100 years NOT free.

  Civil War Centennial: 1965.

  How many Centennials does it take

  To kill me,

  Still alive?

  When the long hot summers come

  Death ain’t

  No jive.

  WHO BUT THE LORD?

  I looked and I saw

  That man they call the Law.

  He was coming

  Down the street at me!

  I had visions in my head

  Of being laid out cold and dead,

  Or else murdered

  By the third degree.

  I said, O, Lord, if you can,

  Save me from that man!

  Don’t let him make a pulp out of me!

  But the Lord he was not quick.

  The Law raised up his stick

  And beat the living hell

  Out of me!

  Now I do not understand

  Why God don’t protect a man

  From police brutality.

  Being poor and black,

  I’ve no weapon to strike back

  So who but the Lord

  Can protect me?

        We’ll see.

  THIRD DEGREE

  Hit me! Jab me!

  Make me say I did it.

  Blood on my sport shirt

  And my tan suede shoes.

  Faces like jack-o’-lanterns

  In gray slouch hats.

  Slug me! Beat me!

  Scream jumps out

  Like blowtorch.

  Three kicks between the legs

  That kill the kids

  I’d make tomorrow.

  Bars and floor skyrocket

  And burst like Roman candles.

  When you throw

  Cold water on me,

  I’ll sign the

  Paper…