Water Music, poetry by Langston Hughes

Catch

Big Boy came
Carrying a mermaid
On his shoulders
And the mermaid
Had her tail Curved
Beneath his arm.

Being a fisher boy,
He’d found a fish
To carry—
Half fish
Half girl
To marry.

April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your
head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sign you a lullaby

The rain makes still pools on the
sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter,
The rain plays a little sleep song
on our roof at night—
And I love the rain.

Sea Calm
How still,
How strangely still
The water is today.
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way.

Jaime
He sits on a hill
And beats a drum
For the great earth spirits
That never come.

He sits on a hill
Looking out to sea
Toward a mirage-land
That will never be.

Sea Charm
Sea charm
The sea’s own children
Do not understand.
They know
But that the sea is strong
Like God’s hand.
They know
But that sea wind is sweet
Like God’s breath,
And that the sea holds
A wide, deep death.

Sailor
He sat upon the rolling deck
Half a world away from home,
And smoked a Capstan cigarette
And watched the blue waves tipped with foam.

He had a mermaid on his arm,
An anchor on his breast,
And tattooed on his back he had
A blue bird in a nest.

Long Trip
The sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.

My Loves
I love to see the big white moon,
A-shining in the sky,
I love to see the little stars,
When the shadow clouds go by.

I love the rain drops falling
On my roof-top in the night;
I love the soft wind’s sighing,
Before the dawn’s gray light.

I love the deepness of the blue,
In my Lord’s heaven above;
But better than all these things
I think,
I love my lady love.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood 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.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.