rivers ancient as the world

Variations on a theme: I was reading around in the Harlem Renaissance, after posting Claude McKay yesterday. Then I was looking for Harriet Tubman poems, in light of today's currency news, and thinking about Langston Hughes's "Freedom Train," which is not really about Tubman or the Underground Railroad, except for the ways in which it is; then I realized that I have never actually posted my favorite Hughes poem. I can't even tell you why this one is my favorite, but it is; it's a classic.

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its
     muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

—Langston Hughes (1902-1967), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," 1920/21, though in this case from Collected Poems, 1994.