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April poems, an homage

Courtesy of Yoksel 🌿 Zok, Unsplash

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” Sonnet XCVIII,  William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Second April

April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
From orchards near and far away
The gray wood-pecker taps and bores,
And men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep;
Noisy and swift the small brooks run.
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun
Pensively; only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep

– Edna St. Vincent Milay

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing 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.

– Lanston Hughes

April

If you had come away with me
into another state
we had been quiet together.
But there the sun coming up
out of the nothing beyond the lake was
too low in the sky,
there was too great a pushing
against him,
too much of sumac buds, pink
in the head
with the clear gum upon them,
too many opening hearts of lilac leaves,
too many, too many swollen
limp poplar tassels on the
bare branches!
It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
springtime!
The pounding of the hoofs on the
raw sods
stayed with me half through the night.
I awoke smiling but tired.

– William Carlos Williams

Elegy in April and September
.
Hush, thrush! Hush, missen-thrush, I listen…
I heard the flush of footsteps through the loose leaves,
And a low whistle by the water’s brim.Still! Daffodil! Nay, hail me not so gaily,-
Your gay gold lily daunts me and deceives,
Who follow gleams more golden and more slim.Look, brook! O run and look, O run!
The vain reeds shook? – Yet search till gray sea heaves,
And I will stray among these fields for him.

Gaze, daisy! Stare through haze and glare,
And mark the hazardous stars all dawns and eves,
For my eye withers, and his star wanes dim.

2

Close, rose, and droop, heliotrope,
And shudder, hope! The shattering winter blows.
Drop, heliotrope, and close, rose…

Mourn, corn, and sigh, rye.
Men garner you, but youth’s head lies forlorn.
Sigh, rye, and mourn, corn…

Brood, wood, and muse, yews,
The ways gods use we have not understood.
Muse, yews, and brood, wood..

– Wilfred Owen

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Depression era moms and a poem by Langston Hughes

“Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,
Help us to see
That without the dust the rainbow
Would not be.”
– Langston Hughes

Family during the Great Depression (Oklahoma) by Dorothea Lange (1936), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div. digital ID cph.3c29107

As a youngster, Mother to Son was one of the first poems I read by Langston Hughes. He had me hooked right away.  I wondered when and where he’d met my mother and my grandmother. Their native language and my mom’s American idiom were different from that of Hughes’ anonymous mom but the song was the same. These were Great Depression era (1929 – late ’30s) mothers. Yes! even mine. My big sister was born in 1936. It was a hard time for most everyone but harder still for minorities, emigres, and single mothers. Hughes wrote the poem when he was twenty-one years old, so the poem actually predates the Depression and he is illustrating the Black-American experience and a mother encouraging her son to preserver in spite of all. This poem, however, has such a wonderful heroic quality and a continuing universal appeal. This is the voice of mothers throughout time and all over the world who are living in strained circumstances.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

– Langston Hughes, excerpt from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
© Hughes’ estate

Langston Hughes (1943) by Gordon Parkes / Public Domain

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967), an inspiration in so many ways,  was a social activist and leader of the HarlemRenaissance, a poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist.  Hughes was an early innovator of a new style in his time, jazz poetry – i.e. jazz-like rhythms, improvisational feel – and much of his poetry was on social justice themes. (Jazz poetry tends to be consider outsider art. It is the root of poetry slams and hip-hop.)

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Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littĂ©raire
Upcoming in digital publications:
“Over His Morning Coffee,” Front Porch Review

A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

 

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Langston Hughes’ Poetic Homage to Helen Keller

Helen Keller

“For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.” Helen Keller, The Story of My Life [recommended – Kindle version is a whopping sixty-cents]

In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul’s own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.

– Langston Hughes

HELEN KELLER (1880-1968) is a hugely compelling figure for so many of us, an inspiration. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a B.A.  – at Harvard University, no less.  She was a writer and activist.

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967) – also an inspiration – was a social activist and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, a poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist.  Hughes was an early innovator of a new style in his time, jazz poetry – i.e. jazz-like rhythms, improvisational feel – and much of his poetry was on social justice themes. (Jazz poetry tends to be consider outsider art. It is the root of poetry slams and hip-hop.)

Photo credit: United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3c12513; Am uncertain of the copyright status. The photographer is unknown.

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL, Langston Hughes

Langston Huges (1902-1967), American Poet, Writer, and Social Activist
Langston Hughes (1902-1967), American Poet, Writer, and Social Activist

Even as I sorted through books one day – including cookbooks – in preparation for a garage sale to be held before moving into disabled-senior housing, a new cookbook enters. A gift from my son, it’s Oscar Tschirky’s (1886-1950) recipe collection. Oscar Tschirky was the famous maĂ®tre d’hĂ´tel at the Waldorf-Astoria, which has some special meaning for me. Occasionally my mom liked to go to the cafĂ© there for blueberry pancakes. It was as close as she could get to being an elegant respectable lady as the world defines such. The book reminds me of her and the poem that follows.

Langston Hughes wrote the poem after walking past the Waldorf during the Great Depression. I’ve read that it was originally published in New Masses magazine, a long defunct American Marxist publication that was the literary organ of the cultural left during and after the Depression.

“The hotel opened,” Hughes wrote in The Big Sea: An Autobiography, “at the very time when people were sleeping on newspapers in doorways, because they had no place to go. But suites in the Waldorf ran into thousands a year, and dinner in the Sert Room was ten dollars! (Negroes, even if they had the money, couldn’t eat there. So naturally, I didn’t care much for the Waldorf-Astoria.)”

ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL

Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:

“All the luxuries of a private home. . . .”
Now, won’t that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
“It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . .” It cost twenty-eight million dollars.
The famous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So when you’ve no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags–
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)

ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers–
sleepers in charity’s flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or haven’t you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You’ve got nothing else to do.

– Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’ photograph is in the public domain. The poem may be in the public domain too given when it was written.Â