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Monday – Labor Day
Given that Labor Day was instituted to give Americans a break from the weariness of work, Langston Hughes’s “The Weary Blues” seems an appropriate poem for today. The poem has always been one of my favorite of his poems. One can imagine various circumstances that have occasioned the piano player’s blues–maybe harsh working conditions, maybe no work at all.
Note how Hughes works changes of rhythm into his account of the pianist’s playing. Some of the lines are drawn out (“He did a lazy sway” and “O Blues!”), some are bouncier (“He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool”). And after the blues provide one kind of relief, sleep provides another.
Happy No Labor Today Day.
The Weary Blues
By Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
