The Kids Who Die,
by Langston Hughes
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get togetherListen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Liebknecht” target= _blank>Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
I’ve been listening off and on to a podcast which features the writer (and my friend) Ethel Rohan. I say I’ve been listening “off and on” because I find that I cannot listen to the conversation for very long without going off on my own mental tangents. While many days, I love that’s how my brain works, it works less well when I’m listening to something and have to keep stopping it.
Like many people, I am still processing the death and the drama surrounding the tragedy of Trayvon Martin. I remember feeling utterly useless as a human being, and feeling that my choice of career was utterly useless. But, two things are gradually turning my head from this conclusion – one, listening to Ethel speak of how she turned to reading and writing during her recent bereavement over the death of both parents, and two, reading The Nerdy Book Club‘s contributor, James Preller, talk about the hows and whys of his 2009 book, BYSTANDER.
Preller quotes Robert McKee’s book, STORY, which is full of such gems as, “Stories are equipment for living,” which is both obvious, and non-obvious, both an esoteric statement, and as real and handy as a toolbox. It is words and thoughts like these which bring me back around again to the poem, and to the story of the death of a child, a young adult, and help me find the words to make sense of it.
You would think, after all this time, that I’d clued in on the idea that story is how we give structure to our world, how we make sense out of the insensible. You would think that, you know, as an erstwhile writer, I’d have gotten that by now. But I don’t, and I haven’t, and I can’t – I was raised with the idea that fiction was lies, was farce, was a waste of a good person’s time, and a sin, really. Thus, I must repeat these facts to myself, and let the “equipment for living” be my trail of breadcrumbs in a dark and noisesome wood. Without that – without the fact that I am creating light through this dark world with my story, I will have lost my purpose.
Without that little spark, we will never find our way through the dark world alone.
“Story isn’t an escape from reality. It is a light that shines upon the dark corners of our world, the secret places, the hidden fears and hopes and dreams.
It is why books matter…” – James Preller