1920’s Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes The Ballad Of The Landlord Harlem [Dream Deferred] Landlord, landlord, My roof has sprung a leak. Don't you 'member I told you about it Way last week? What happens to a dream deferred? Landlord, landlord, These steps is broken down. When you come up yourself It's a wonder you don't fall down. Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten Bucks you say is due? Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you Till you fix this house up new. What? You gonna get eviction orders? You gonna cut off my heat? You gonna take my furniture and Throw it in the street? Umhuh! You talking high and mighty. Talk on-'till you get through. You ain't gonna be able to say a word If I land my fist on you. Police! Police! Come and get this man! He's trying to ruin the government And overturn the land! Copper's whistle! Patrol bell! Arrest. Precinct Station. Iron cell. Headlines in press: Man Threatens landlord Tenant Held Bail Judge Gives Negro 90 Days In County Jail! Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a soreAnd then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Countee Cullen Claude McKay Incident Outcast Once riding in old Baltimore, Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.' I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That's all that I remember. For the dim regions whence my fathers came My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs. Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame; My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs. I would go back to darkness and to peace, But the great western world holds me in fee, And I may never hope for full release While to its alien gods I bend my knee. Something in me is lost, forever lost, Some vital thing has gone out of my heart, And I must walk the way of life a ghost Among the sons of earth, a thing apart; For I was born, far from my native clime, Under the white man's menace, out of time. If We Must Die Yet Do I Marvel I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, 0 let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! 0, kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!