"Listen, kids who die-- / Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you / Except in our hearts / Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp / Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, / Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht / But the day will come-- / Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—- / When the marching feet of the masses / Will raise for you a living monument of love, / And joy, and laughter."
— Hughes, Langston (1902-1967))
Work Title
Place of Publication
New York
Date
1938
Metaphor
"Listen, kids who die-- / Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you / Except in our hearts / Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp / Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, / Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht / But the day will come-- / Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—- / When the marching feet of the masses / Will raise for you a living monument of love, / And joy, and laughter."
Metaphor in Context
Listen, kids who die--
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come--
Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—-
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky--
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come--
Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—-
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky--
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
Categories
Provenance
Reading City Lights blog in aftermath of Trayvon Martin shooting <Link>
Citation
Printed in A New Song (New York: International Workers Order, 1938).
See also The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, eds. A. Rampersad and D. Roessel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994), pp. 210-1.
See also The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, eds. A. Rampersad and D. Roessel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994), pp. 210-1.
Date of Entry
07/15/2013
