Langston Blue by Jericho Brown

Langston Blue

“O Blood of the River of songs,

O songs of the River of Blood,”

        Let me lie down. Let my words 

Lie sound in the mouths of men

Repeating invocations pure

        And perfect as a moan 

That mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith.

Blues for the angels kicked out       

Of heaven. Blues for the angels 

Who miss them still. Blues

For my people and what water

        They know. O weary drinkers 

Drinking from the bloody river,

Why go to heaven with Harlem

        So close? Why sing of rivers 

With fathers of our own to miss?

I remember mine and taste a stain

        Like blood coursing the body 

Of a man chased by a mob. I write

His running, his sweat: here,

        He climbs a poplar for the sky, 

But it is only sky. The river?

Follow me. You’ll see. We tried

        To fly and learned we couldn’t 

Swim. Dear singing river full

Of my blood, are we as loud under

        Water? Is it blood that binds 

Brothers? Or is it the Mississippi

Running through the fattest vein

        Of America? When I say home, 

I mean I wanted to write some

Lines. I wanted to hear the blues,

        But here I am swimming in the river 

Again. What flows through the fat

Veins of a drowned body? What

        America can a body call 

Home? When I say Congo, I mean

Blood. When I say Nile, I mean blood.

        When I say Euphrates, I mean, 

If only you knew what blood

We have in common. So much,

        In Louisiana, they call a man like me 

Red. And red was too dark

For my daddy. And my daddy was

        Too dark for America. He ran 

Like a man from my mother

And me. And my mother’s sobs

        Are the songs of Bessie Smith 

Who wears more feathers than Death.

O the death my people refuse

        To die. When I was 18, I wrote down 

The river though I couldn’t win

A race, climbed a tree that winter, then

        Fell, flat on my wet, red face. Line 

After line, I read all the time,

But “there was nothing I could do

        About race.”