The Negro

[Harold Betters]

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips

Has dark moons of weariness

Beneath his eyes

Where the smoldering memory

Of slave ships

Blazed to the crack of whips

About his thighs...



The music

From the trumpet at his lips

Is honey

Mixed with fire.

The rhythm

From the trumpet at his lips

Is ecstasy

Distilled from old desire...






Langston Hughes poem \"Trumpet Player: 52nd Street,\" excerpt: The Negro

with...
Credit: Courtesy of Robert Shetterly,www.americanswhotellthetruth.org

In his great poem, \"Trumpet Player: 52nd Street,\" African-American poet Langston Hughes, a graduate of Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, evoked a sense of how within jazz one could hear the sound of the African-American soul. Hughes was a great lover of jazz, a form of music that spoke deeply to all races of people around the world.