Langston Hughes – Aug 24, Iyengar II & I

The House in Taos

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?

I found this piece embedded in an autobiography of Hughes. He described being a college student in the 1920’s, going to Greenwich Village on the weekends to be around writers and artists. Many of these folks were talking about going to Taos, for the desert and the Indians. Remember this is a young black man, who wondered what the Indians thought about these crazy white people. It inspired the poem below. After it was published, many thought it was written about Mabel Dodge Lujan’s house. Hughes said he didn’t know of her when he wrote the poem. This is just the opening stanza. Taos must have sounded like the other side of the world.