The Panther and the Lash by Langston Hughes Page A

laurels on your brow
          Today—
    Then before you can walk
    To the neighborhood corner,
    Watch them droop, wilt, fade
          Away.
    Though worn in glory on my head,
    They do not last a day—
          Not one—
    Nor take the place of meat or bread
    Or rent that I must pay.
    Great names for crowns and garlands!
          Yeah!
    I love Ralph Bunche—
    But I can’t eat him for lunch.
ELDERLY LEADERS
    The old, the cautious, the over-wise—
    Wisdom reduced to the personal equation:
    Life is a system of half-truths and lies,
    Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
          Elderly,
          Famous,
          Very well paid,
          They clutch at the egg
          Their master’s
          Goose laid:
          $$$$$
          $$$$
          $$$
          $$
          $
          •
THE BACKLASH BLUES
    Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,
    Just who do you think I am?
    Tell me,
Mister
Backlash,
    Who do you think I am?
    You raise my taxes, freeze my wages,
    Send my son to Vietnam.
    You give me second-class houses,
    Give me second-class schools,
    Second-class houses
    And second-class schools.
    You must think us colored folks
    Are second-class fools.
    When I try to find a job
    To earn a little cash,
    Try to find myself a job
    To earn a little cash,
    All you got to offer
    Is a white backlash.
    But the world is big,
    The world is big and round,
    Great big world, Mister Backlash,
    Big and bright and round—
    And it’s full of folks like me who are
    Black, Yellow, Beige, and Brown.
    Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash,
    What do you think I got to lose?
    Tell me, Mister Backlash,
    What you think I got to lose?
    I’m gonna leave you, Mister Backlash,
    Singing your mean old backlash blues.
                   You’re
the
one,
                   Yes, you’re
the
one
                   
Will have the blues
.
LENOX AVENUE BAR
    Weaving
    between assorted terrors
    is the Jew
    who owns the place—
    one Jew,
    fifty Negroes:
    embroideries
    (heirloomed
    from ancient evenings)
    tattered
    in this neon
    place.
MOTTO
    I play it cool
    And dig all jive—
    That’s the reason
    I stay alive.
    My motto,
    As I live and learn
                  Is
    Dig and be dug
    In return.
JUNIOR ADDICT
    The little boy
    who sticks a needle in his arm
    and seeks an out in other worldly dreams,
    who seeks an out in eyes that droop
    and ears that close to Harlem screams,
    cannot know, of course,
    (and has no way to understand)
    a sunrise that he cannot see
    beginning in some other land—
    but destined sure to flood—and soon—
    the very room in which he leaves
    his needle and his spoon,
    the very room in which today the air
    is heavy with the drug
    of his despair.
          (Yet little can
          tomorrow’s sunshine give
          to one who will not live.)
    Quick, sunrise, come—
    Before the mushroom bomb
    Pollutes his stinking air
    With better death
    Than is his living here,
    With viler drugs
    Than bring today’s release
    In poison from the fallout
    Of our peace.
          
“It’s easier to get dope
          
than it is to get a job.”
    Yes, easier to get dope
    than to get a job—
    daytime or nightime job,
    teen-age, pre-draft,
    pre-lifetime job.
    Quick, sunrise, come!
    Sunrise out of Africa,
    Quick, come!
    Sunrise, please come!
    Come! Come!
DREAM DEFERRED
    What happens to a dream deferred?
          Does it dry up
          like a raisin in the sun?
          Or fester like a sore—
          And then run?
          Does it stink like rotten meat?
          Or crust and sugar over—
          like a syrupy sweet?
          Maybe it just sags
          like a heavy