The Negro Speaks of Rivers by LANGSTON HUGHES

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.

From “Selected Poems of Langston Hughes,” an edition published this month by Vintage Classics ($9.95, paper; 297 pp.). The 1926 publication of Hughes’ first book of poems, “The Weary Blues,” launched a renaissance in black writing in America. copyright 1959 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.