Songs for the Open Road

Earlier today, I decided to stop by The Strand to check out the stacks carrying one-dollar books. Among the few ones I decided to bring home with me, there is one titled Songs for the Open Road, a selection of poems about travel and adventure.

While I was waiting for the train to depart, I decided to browse through the pages, and found a poem by one of my favorite writers, Langston Hughes, called "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," dedicated to W.E.B. Du Bois. And I read it.

Then I began browsing again, looking at the names of the poets included: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, e. e. cummings, Robert Frost, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce... I was looking for any other piece by Hughes. And I found it.

When I looked at the title, I smiled... The coincidence... "Pennsylvania Station." Exactly the place where I was.

Pennsylvania Station

The Pennsylvania Station in New York

Is like some vast basilica of old

That towers above the terrors of the dark

As bulwark and protection to the soul.

Now people who are hurrying alone

And those who come in crowds from far away

Pass through this great concourse of steel and stone

To trains, or else from trains out into day.

And as in great basilicas of old

The search was ever for a dream of God,

So here the search is still within each soul

Some seed to find to root the earthly sod,

Some seed to find that sprouts a holy tree

To glorify the earth –and you– and me.

Langston Hughes

And how deeply I loved it. And how many times I reread it. And how it made more sense each time, and I could understand every sentence. And I wondered at that great moment of chance, and at that unexpected sense of identification with this poet and this speaker who left this earth some 42 years ago... How marvelous, indeed. How timeless, he.