Read "A House in Taos" by Langston Hughes online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Rain / Thunder of the Rain God: / And we three / Smitten by beauty.
/ Thunder of the Rain God: / And we three / Weary, weary.
/ Thunder of the Rain God: / And you, she, and I / Waiting for nothingness.
/ Do you understand the stillness / Of this house in Taos / Under the thunder of the Rain God?
Sun / That there should be a barren garden / About this house in Taos / Is not so strange, / But that there should be three barren hearts / In this one house in Taos -- / Who carries ugly things to show the sun?
Moon / Did you ask for the beaten brass of the moon? / We can buy lovely things with money, / You, she and I, / Yet you seek / As though you could keep, / This unbought loveliness of moon.
Wind / Touch our bodies, wind.
/ Our bodies are separate individual things. / Touch our bodies, wind, / But blow quickly / Through the red, white, yellow skins / Of our bodies / To the terrible snarl, / Not mine, / Not yours, / Not hers, / But all one snarl of souls.
/ Blow quickly, wind, / Before we run back into the windlessness -- / With our bodies -- / Into the windlessness / Of our house in Taos.
Suicide / Ma sweet good man has / Packed his trunk and left.
/ Ma sweet good man has / Packed his trunk and left.
/ Nobody to love me: / I'm gonna kill ma self.
/ I'm gonna buy me a knife with / A blade ten inches long.
/ Gonna buy a knife with / A blade ten inches long.
/ Shall I carve ma self or / That man that done me wrong?
/ 'Lieve I'll jump in de river / Eighty-nine feet deep.
/ 'Lieve I'll jump in de river / Eighty-nine feet deep.
/ Cause de river's quiet / An' a po', po' gal can sleep.