Transcriber’s Notes

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[Other notes] may be found at the end of this eBook.

THE WEARY BLUES

by

LANGSTON HUGHES

WITH AN INTRODUCTON BY
CARL VAN VECHTEN

NEW YORK
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
1926

THE WEARY BLUES

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC · SET UP, ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · ESPARTO PAPER MANUFACTURED IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK · BOUND BY THE H. WOLFF ESTATE, NEW YORK.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY MOTHER

I wish to thank the editors of The Crisis, Opportunity, Survey Graphic, Vanity Fair, The World Tomorrow and The Amsterdam News for having first published some of the poems in this book.

INTRODUCING LANGSTON HUGHES TO THE READER

I

At the moment I cannot recall the name of any other person whatever who, at the age of twenty-three, has enjoyed so picturesque and rambling an existence as Langston Hughes. Indeed, a complete account of his disorderly and delightfully fantastic career would make a fascinating picaresque romance which I hope this young Negro will write before so much more befalls him that he may find it difficult to capture all the salient episodes within the limits of a single volume.

Born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, he had lived, before his twelfth year, in the City of Mexico, Topeka, Kansas, Colorado Springs, Charlestown, Indiana, Kansas City, and Buffalo. He attended Central High School, from which he graduated, at Cleveland, Ohio, while in the summer, there and in Chicago, he worked as delivery- and dummy-boy in hat-stores. In his senior year he was elected class poet and editor of the Year Book.

After four years in Cleveland, he once more joined his father in Mexico, only to migrate to New York where he entered Columbia University. There, finding the environment distasteful, or worse, he remained till spring, when he quit, broke with his father and, with thirteen dollars in cash, went on his own. First, he worked for a truck-farmer on Staten Island; next, he delivered flowers for Thorley; at length he partially satisfied an insatiable craving to go to sea by signing up with an old ship anchored in the Hudson for the winter. His first real cruise as a sailor carried him to the Canary Islands, the Azores, and the West Coast of Africa, of which voyage he has written: “Oh, the sun in Dakar! Oh, the little black girls of Burutu! Oh, the blue, blue bay of Loanda! Calabar, the city lost in a forest; the long, shining days at sea, the masts rocking against the stars at night; the black Kru-boy sailors, taken at Freetown, bathing on deck morning and evening; Tom Pey and Haneo, whose dangerous job it was to dive under the seven-ton mahogany logs floating and bobbing at the ship’s side and fasten them to the chains of the crane; the vile houses of rotting women at Lagos; the desolation of the Congo; Johnny Walker, and the millions of whisky bottles buried in the sea along the West Coast; the daily fights on board, officers, sailors, everybody drunk; the timorous, frightened missionaries we carried as passengers; and George, the Kentucky colored boy, dancing and singing the Blues on the after-deck under the stars.”

Returning to New York with plenty of money and a monkey, he presently shipped again—this time for Holland. Again he came back to New York and again he sailed—on his twenty-second birthday: February 1, 1924. Three weeks later he found himself in Paris with less than seven dollars. However, he was soon provided for: a woman of his own race engaged him as doorman at her boîte de nuit. Later he was employed, first as second cook, then as waiter, at the Grand Duc, where the Negro entertainer, Florence, sang at this epoch. Here he made friends with an Italian family who carried him off to their villa at Desenzano on Lago di Garda where he passed a happy month, followed by a night in Verona and a week in Venice. On his way back across Italy his passport was stolen and he became a beach-comber in Genoa. He has described his life there to me: “Wine and figs and pasta. And sunlight! And amusing companions, dozens of other beach-combers roving the dockyards and water-front streets, getting their heads whacked by the Fascisti, and breaking one loaf of bread into so many pieces that nobody got more than a crumb. I lived in the public gardens along the water-front and slept in the Albergo Populare for two lire a night amidst the snores of hundreds of other derelicts.... I painted my way home as a sailor. It seems that I must have painted the whole ship myself. We made a regular ‘grand tour’: Livorno, Napoli (we passed so close to Capri I could have cried). Then all around Sicily—Catania, Messina, Palermo—the Lipari Islands, miserable little peaks of pumice stone out in the sea; then across to Spain, divine Spain! My buddy and I went on a spree in Valencia for a night and a day.... Oh, the sweet wine of Valencia!”

He arrived in New York on November 10, 1924. That evening I attended a dance given in Harlem by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some time during the course of the night, Walter White asked me to meet two young Negro poets. He introduced me to Countée Cullen and Langston Hughes. Before that moment I had never heard of either of them.

II

I have merely sketched a primitive outline of a career as rich in adventures as a fruit-cake is full of raisins. I have already stated that I hope Langston Hughes may be persuaded to set it down on paper in the minutest detail, for the bull-fights in Mexico, the drunken gaiety of the Grand Duc, the delicately exquisite grace of the little black girls at Burutu, the exotic languor of the Spanish women at Valencia, the barbaric jazz dances of the cabarets in New York’s own Harlem, the companionship of sailors of many races and nationalities, all have stamped an indelible impression on the highly sensitized, poetic imagination of this young Negro, an impression which has found its initial expression in the poems assembled in this book.

And also herein may be discerned that nostalgia for color and warmth and beauty which explains this boy’s nomadic instincts.

“We should have a land of sun,

Of gorgeous sun,

And a land of fragrant water

Where the twilight

Is a soft bandanna handkerchief

Of rose and gold,

And not this land where life is cold,”

he sings. Again, he tells his dream:

“To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,

Dance! whirl! whirl!

Till the quick day is done.

Rest at pale evening....

A tall, slim tree....

Night coming tenderly.

Black like me.”

More of this wistful longing may be discovered in the poems entitled The South and As I Grew Older. His verses, however, are by no means limited to an exclusive mood; he writes caressingly of little black prostitutes in Harlem; his cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race in Cross and The Jester; he sighs, in one of the most successful of his fragile poems, over the loss of a loved friend. Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal. They are the (I had almost said informal, for they have a highly deceptive air of spontaneous improvisation) expression of an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature, seeking always to break through the veil that obscures for him, at least in some degree, the ultimate needs of that nature.

To the Negro race in America, since the day when Phillis Wheatley indited lines to General George Washington and other aristocratic figures (for Phillis Wheatley never sang “My way’s cloudy,” or “By an by, I’m goin to lay down dis heavy load”) there have been born many poets. Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Countée Cullen, are a few of the more memorable names. Not the least of these names, I think, is that of Langston Hughes, and perhaps his adventures and personality offer the promise of as rich a fulfillment as has been the lot of any of the others.

Carl Van Vechten.

New York.

August 3, 1925.

CONTENTS

PROEM

I am a Negro:

Black as the night is black,

Black like the depths of my Africa.

I’ve been a slave:

Caesar told me to keep his door-steps clean.

I brushed the boots of Washington.

I’ve been a worker:

Under my hand the pyramids arose.

I made mortar for the Woolworth Building.

I’ve been a singer:

All the way from Africa to Georgia

I carried my sorrow songs.

I made ragtime.

I’ve been a victim:

The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo.

They lynch me now in Texas.

I am a Negro:

Black as the night is black,

Black like the depths of my Africa.

THE WEARY BLUES

THE WEARY BLUES

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

He did a lazy sway....

He did a lazy sway....

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man’s soul.

O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—

“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more—

“I got the Weary Blues

And I can’t be satisfied.

Got the Weary Blues

And can’t be satisfied—

I ain’t happy no mo’

And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

JAZZONIA

Oh, silver tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

A dancing girl whose eyes are bold

Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve’s eyes

In the first garden

Just a bit too bold?

Was Cleopatra gorgeous

In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree!

Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaret

Six long-headed jazzers play.

NEGRO DANCERS

“Me an’ ma baby’s

Got two mo’ ways,

Two mo’ ways to do de buck!

Da, da,

Da, da, da!

Two mo’ ways to do de buck!”

Soft light on the tables,

Music gay,

Brown-skin steppers

In a cabaret.

White folks, laugh!

White folks, pray!

“Me an’ ma baby’s

Got two mo’ ways,

Two mo’ ways to do de buck!”

THE CAT AND THE SAXOPHONE (2 A.M.)

EVERYBODY

Half-pint,—

Gin?

No, make it

LOVES MY BABY

corn. You like

liquor,

don’t you, honey?

BUT MY BABY

Sure. Kiss me,

DON’T LOVE NOBODY

daddy.

BUT ME.

Say!

EVERYBODY

Yes?

WANTS MY BABY

I’m your

BUT MY BABY

sweetie, ain’t I?

DON’T WANT NOBODY

Sure.

BUT

Then let’s

ME,

do it!

SWEET ME.

Charleston,

mamma!

!

YOUNG SINGER

One who sings “chansons vulgaires”

In a Harlem cellar

Where the jazz-band plays

From dark to dawn

Would not understand

Should you tell her

That she is like a nymph

For some wild faun.

CABARET

Does a jazz-band ever sob?

They say a jazz-band’s gay.

Yet as the vulgar dancers whirled

And the wan night wore away,

One said she heard the jazz-band sob

When the little dawn was grey.

TO MIDNIGHT NAN AT LEROY’S

Strut and wiggle,

Shameless gal.

Wouldn’t no good fellow

Be your pal.

Hear dat music....

Jungle night.

Hear dat music....

And the moon was white.

Sing your Blues song,

Pretty baby.

You want lovin’

And you don’t mean maybe.

Jungle lover....

Night black boy....

Two against the moon

And the moon was joy.

Strut and wiggle,

Shameless Nan.

Wouldn’t no good fellow

Be your man.

TO A LITTLE LOVER-LASS, DEAD

She

Who searched for lovers

In the night

Has gone the quiet way

Into the still,

Dark land of death

Beyond the rim of day.

Now like a little lonely waif

She walks

An endless street

And gives her kiss to nothingness.

Would God his lips were sweet!

HARLEM NIGHT CLUB

Sleek black boys in a cabaret.

Jazz-band, jazz-band,—

Play, plAY, PLAY!

Tomorrow....who knows?

Dance today!

White girls’ eyes

Call gay black boys.

Black boys’ lips

Grin jungle joys.

Dark brown girls

In blond men’s arms.

Jazz-band, jazz-band,—

Sing Eve’s charms!

White ones, brown ones,

What do you know

About tomorrow

Where all paths go?

Jazz-boys, jazz-boys,—

Play, plAY, PLAY!

Tomorrow....is darkness.

Joy today!

NUDE YOUNG DANCER

What jungle tree have you slept under,

Midnight dancer of the jazzy hour?

What great forest has hung its perfume

Like a sweet veil about your bower?

What jungle tree have you slept under,

Night-dark girl of the swaying hips?

What star-white moon has been your mother?

To what clean boy have you offered your lips?

YOUNG PROSTITUTE

Her dark brown face

Is like a withered flower

On a broken stem.

Those kind come cheap in Harlem

So they say.

TO A BLACK DANCER IN “THE LITTLE SAVOY”

Wine-maiden

Of the jazz-tuned night,

Lips

Sweet as purple dew,

Breasts

Like the pillows of all sweet dreams,

Who crushed

The grapes of joy

And dripped their juice

On you?

SONG FOR A BANJO DANCE

Shake your brown feet, honey,

Shake your brown feet, chile,

Shake your brown feet, honey,

Shake ’em swift and wil’—

Get way back, honey,

Do that low-down step.

Walk on over, darling,

Now! Come out

With your left.

Shake your brown feet, honey,

Shake ’em, honey chile.

Sun’s going down this evening—

Might never rise no mo’.

The sun’s going down this very night—

Might never rise no mo’—

So dance with swift feet, honey,

(The banjo’s sobbing low)

Dance with swift feet, honey—

Might never dance no mo’.

Shake your brown feet, Liza,

Shake ’em, Liza, chile,

Shake your brown feet, Liza,

(The music’s soft and wil’)

Shake your brown feet, Liza,

(The banjo’s sobbing low)

The sun’s going down this very night—

Might never rise no mo’.

BLUES FANTASY

Hey! Hey!

That’s what the

Blues singers say.

Singing minor melodies