---
created_at: '2013-06-12T04:11:40.000Z'
title: '"Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes (1935)'
url: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609
author: mksm
points: 89
story_text: ''
comment_text: 
num_comments: 4
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1371010300
_tags:
- story
- author_mksm
- story_5866498
objectID: '5866498'
year: 1935

---
When Hades decided he loved this girl  
he built for her a duplicate of earth,  
everything the same, down to the meadow,  
but with a bed added.

Everything the same, including sunlight,  
because it would be hard on a young girl  
to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness

Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,  
first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.  
Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.  
Let Persephone get used to it slowly.  
In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.

A replica of earth  
except there was love here.  
Doesn't everyone want love?

He waited many years,  
building a world, watching  
Persephone in the meadow.  
Persephone, a smeller, a taster.  
If you have one appetite, he thought,  
you have them all.

Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night  
the beloved body, compass, polestar,  
to hear the quiet breathing that says  
I am alive, that means also  
you are alive, because you hear me,  
you are here with me. And when one turns,  
the other turns—

That's what he felt, the lord of darkness,  
looking at the world he had  
constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind  
that there'd be no more smelling here,  
certainly no more eating.

Guilt? Terror? The fear of love?  
These things he couldn't imagine;  
no lover ever imagines them.

He dreams, he wonders what to call this place.  
First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden.  
In the end, he decides to name it  
Persephone's Girlhood.

A soft light rising above the level meadow,  
behind the bed. He takes her in his arms.  
He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you

but he thinks  
this is a lie, so he says in the end  
you're dead, nothing can hurt you  
which seems to him  
a more promising beginning, more true.
