Tired, Langston Hughes

To wrap up April, a month of seemingly nothing but poems, I’ve circled back to a poet I haven’t read as much in my adult life as I did when I was a teen, Langston Hughes. Hughes was the founder and leader of the Harlem Renaissance movement, an activist and a journalist. “Tired,” from 1931, somehow reaches across the time and sums up just how I feel in 2024 when I look at the world, go online, or turn on cable news. In part, it reads, “I am so tired of waiting / aren’t you / for the world to become good / And beautiful and kind?”