Hughes and Poem.

Born in Joplin, Mississippi, you cannot talk of Harlem without talking of Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance was nearly his invention, he certainly was its greatest voice, and he sought to give African- and Caribbean-Americans a similar voice, one without self-hatred, fear, or shame. He wrote columns, novels, and plays, but I love him for his poems, many short, some epic, all empowering. He inspired his contemporaries like Thurgood Marshall, Zora Neale Thurston, and Aaron Douglas and many foreign authors including black writers in French-speaking Africa. He discovered Alice Walker. Published often in The Crisis, the official literary magazine of the NAACP, he is most known for The Negro Speaks of Rivers, The Weary Blues, Let America be America Again, and Harlem, What Happens to a Dream Deferred? But it is the short poem below that took the wind out of my sails one day and I've never been quite the same since. It says nearly nothing, but because it is so specific, a moment we've all experienced--a poem about not having the words to write a poem--that it says everything to me, the bravery of a heart that puts a friendship in a box on a shelf because the silence is far more powerful than the poem. That is a courageous writer. And every time I encounter this piece, part of me cracks with a perfect sadness.

Poem.

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There's nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began--

I loved my friend.