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Best Famous Congo Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Congo poems. This is a select list of the best famous Congo poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Congo poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of congo poems.

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Written by Langston Hughes | Create an image from this poem

The ***** Speaks Of Rivers

 I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
 flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


Written by John Ashbery | Create an image from this poem

Into the Dusk-Charged Air

 Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire Near where it joined the Cher.
The St.
Lawrence prods among black stones And mud.
But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson's Surface.
The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber Is contained within steep banks.
The Isar Flows too fast to swim in, the Jordan's water Courses over the flat land.
The Allegheny and its boats Were dark blue.
The Moskowa is Gray boats.
The Amstel flows slowly.
Leaves fall into the Connecticut as it passes Underneath.
The Liffey is full of sewage, Like the Seine, but unlike The brownish-yellow Dordogne.
Mountains hem in the Colorado And the Oder is very deep, almost As deep as the Congo is wide.
The plain banks of the Neva are Gray.
The dark Saône flows silently.
And the Volga is long and wide As it flows across the brownish land.
The Ebro Is blue, and slow.
The Shannon flows Swiftly between its banks.
The Mississippi Is one of the world's longest rivers, like the Amazon.
It has the Missouri for a tributary.
The Harlem flows amid factories And buildings.
The Nelson is in Canada, Flowing.
Through hard banks the Dubawnt Forces its way.
People walk near the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away; The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.
The Loir bursts its frozen shackles But the Moldau's wet mud ensnares it.
The East catches the light.
Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.
The Po too flows, and the many-colored Thames.
Into the Atlantic Ocean Pours the Garonne.
Few ships navigate On the Housatonic, but quite a few can be seen On the Elbe.
For centuries The Afton has flowed.
If the Rio ***** Could abandon its song, and the Magdalena The jungle flowers, the Tagus Would still flow serenely, and the Ohio Abrade its slate banks.
The tan Euphrates would Sidle silently across the world.
The Yukon Was choked with ice, but the Susquehanna still pushed Bravely along.
The Dee caught the day's last flares Like the Pilcomayo's carrion rose.
The Peace offered eternal fragrance Perhaps, but the Mackenzie churned livid mud Like tan chalk-marks.
Near where The Brahmaputra slapped swollen dikes And the Pechora? The São Francisco Skulks amid gray, rubbery nettles.
The Liard's Reflexes are slow, and the Arkansas erodes Anthracite hummocks.
The Paraná stinks.
The Ottawa is light emerald green Among grays.
Better that the Indus fade In steaming sands! Let the Brazos Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must Find a way to freeze it hard.
The Ural Is freezing slowly in the blasts.
The black Yonne Congeals nicely.
And the Petit-Morin Curls up on the solid earth.
The Inn Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's Galvanized.
The Ganges is liquid snow by now; The Vyatka's ice-gray.
The once-molten Tennessee s Curdled.
The Japurá is a pack of ice.
Gelid The Columbia's gray loam banks.
The Don's merely A giant icicle.
The Niger freezes, slowly.
The interminable Lena plods on But the Purus' mercurial waters are icy, grim With cold.
The Loing is choked with fragments of ice.
The Weser is frozen, like liquid air.
And so is the Kama.
And the beige, thickly flowing Tocantins.
The rivers bask in the cold.
The stern Uruguay chafes its banks, A mass of ice.
The Hooghly is solid Ice.
The Adour is silent, motionless.
The lovely Tigris is nothing but scratchy ice Like the Yellowstone, with its osier-clustered banks.
The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little And the Donets gurgles beneath the Huge blocks of ice.
The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound.
Somewhere The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's Frozen.
The Oka is frozen solider Than the Somme.
The Minho slumbers In winter, nor does the Snake Remember August.
Hilarious, the Canadian Is solid ice.
The Madeira slavers Across the thawing fields, and the Plata laughs.
The Dvina soaks up the snow.
The Sava's Temperature is above freezing.
The Avon Carols noiselessly.
The Drôme presses Grass banks; the Adige's frozen Surface is like gray pebbles.
Birds circle the Ticino.
In winter The Var was dark blue, unfrozen.
The Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice; The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.
Written by Vachel Lindsay | Create an image from this poem

The Congo: A Study of the ***** Race

 I.
THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.
I could not turn from their revel in derision.
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, More deliberate.
Solemnly chanted.
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
Then along that riverbank A thousand miles Tattooed cannibals danced in files; Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.
A rapidly piling climax of speed & racket.
And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors, "BLOOD" screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors, "Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle, Harry the uplands, Steal all the cattle, Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, Bing.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," A roaring, epic, rag-time tune With a philosophic pause.
From the mouth of the Congo To the Mountains of the Moon.
Death is an Elephant, Torch-eyed and horrible, Shrilly and with a heavily accented metre.
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies, BOOM, kill the Arabs, BOOM, kill the white men, HOO, HOO, HOO.
Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost Like the wind in the chimney.
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Listen to the creepy proclamation, Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation, Blown past the white-ants' hill of clay, Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: -- "Be careful what you do, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, All the "O" sounds very golden.
Heavy accents very heavy.
Light accents very light.
Last line whispered.
And all of the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
" II.
THEIR IRREPRESSIBLE HIGH SPIRITS Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call Rather shrill and high.
Danced the juba in their gambling-hall And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town, And guyed the policemen and laughed them down With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, Read exactly as in first section.
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
A ***** fairyland swung into view, Lay emphasis on the delicate ideas.
Keep as light-footed as possible.
A minstrel river Where dreams come true.
The ebony palace soared on high Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.
The inlaid porches and casements shone With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.
And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore At the baboon butler in the agate door, And the well-known tunes of the parrot band That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.
A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came With pomposity.
Through the agate doorway in suits of flame, Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.
And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call And danced the juba from wall to wall.
But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng With a great deliberation & ghostliness.
With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: -- "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
" .
.
.
Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, With overwhelming assurance, good cheer, and pomp.
Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine.
And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, With growing speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black-feet.
And the couples railed at the chant and the frown Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.
(O rare was the revel, and well worth while That made those glowering witch-men smile.
) The cake-walk royalty then began To walk for a cake that was tall as a man To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM," While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air, With a touch of ***** dialect, and as rapidly as possible toward the end.
And sang with the scalawags prancing there: -- "Walk with care, walk with care, Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo, And all the other Gods of the Congo, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Beware, beware, walk with care, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
" Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while Slow philosophic calm.
That made those glowering witch-men smile.
III.
THE HOPE OF THEIR RELIGION A good old ***** in the slums of the town Heavy bass.
With a literal imitation of camp-meeting racket, and trance.
Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.
Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.
Beat on the Bible till he wore it out Starting the jubilee revival shout.
And some had visions, as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs, And they all repented, a thousand strong From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room With "glory, glory, glory," And "Boom, boom, BOOM.
" THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, Exactly as in the first section.
Begin with terror and power, end with joy.
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.
And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil And showed the Apostles with their coats of mail.
In bright white steel they were seated round And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.
And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: -- "Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; Sung to the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.
" Never again will he hoo-doo you, Never again will he hoo-doo you.
" Then along that river, a thousand miles With growing deliberation and joy.
The vine-snared trees fell down in files.
Pioneer angels cleared the way For a Congo paradise, for babes at play, For sacred capitals, for temples clean.
Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.
There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed In a rather high key -- as delicately as possible.
A million boats of the angels sailed With oars of silver, and prows of blue And silken pennants that the sun shone through.
'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.
Oh, a singing wind swept the ***** nation And on through the backwoods clearing flew: -- "Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.
To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices.
" Never again will he hoo-doo you.
Never again will he hoo-doo you.
Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men, And only the vulture dared again By the far, lone mountains of the moon To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: -- "Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper.
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo .
.
.
Jumbo .
.
.
will .
.
.
hoo-doo .
.
.
you.
"
Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

Koening Of The River

 Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles coated with coal dust.
Staying aboard, he saw, up in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule, untethered, with no harness, and no signs of habitation round the ruined factory wheel locked hard in rust, and through whose spokes the vines of wild yam leaves leant from overweight; the wild bananas in the yellowish sunlight were dugged like aching cows with unmilked fruit.
This was the last of the productive mines.
Only the vegetation here looked right.
A crab of pain scuttled shooting up his foot and fastened on his neck, at the brain's root.
He felt his reason curling back like parchment in this fierce torpor.
Well, he no longer taxed and tired what was left of his memory; he should thank heaven he had escaped the sea, and anyway, he had demanded to be sent here with the others - why get this river vexed with his complaints? Koenig wanted to sing, suddenly, if only to keep the river company - this was a river, and Koenig, his name meant King.
They had all caught the missionary fever: they were prepared to expiate the sins os savages, to tame them as he would tame this river subtly, as it flowed, accepting its bends; he had seen how other missionaries met their ends - swinging in the wind, like a dead clapper when a bell is broken, if that sky was a bell - for treating savages as if they were men, and frightening them with talk of Heaven and Hell.
But I have forgotten our journey's origins, mused Koenig, and our purpose.
He knew it was noble, based on some phrase, forgotten, from the Bible, but he felt bodiless, like a man stumbling from the pages of a novel, not a forest, written a hundred years ago.
He stroked his uniform, clogged with the hooked burrs that had tried to pull him, like the other drowning hands whom his panic abandoned.
The others had died, like real men, by death.
I, Koenig, am a ghost, ghost-king of rivers.
Well, even ghosts must rest.
If he knew he was lost he was not lost.
It was when you pretended that you were a fool.
He banked and leaned tiredly on the pole.
If I'm a character called Koenig, then I shall dominate my future like a fiction in which there is a real river and real sky, so I'm not really tired, and should push on.
The lights between the leaves were beautiful, and, as in that far life, now he was grateful for any pool of light between the dull, usual clouds of life: a sunspot haloed his tonsure; silver and copper coins danced on the river; his head felt warm - the light danced on his skull like a benediction.
Koenig closed his eyes, and he felt blessed.
It made direction sure.
He leant on the pole.
He must push on some more.
He said his name.
His voice sounded German, then he said "river", but what was German if he alone could hear it? Ich spreche Deutsch sounded as genuine as his name in English, Koenig in Deutsch, and, in English, King.
Did the river want to be called anything? He asked the river.
The river said nothing.
Around the bend the river poured its silver like some remorseful mine, giving and giving everything green and white: white sky, white water, and the dull green like a drumbeat of the slow-sliding forest, the green heat; then, on some sandbar, a mirage ahead: fabric of muslin sails, spiderweb rigging, a schooner, foundered on black river mud, was rising slowly up from the riverbed, and a top-hatted native reading an inverted newspaper.
"Where's our Queen?" Koenig shouted.
"Where's our Kaiser?" The ****** disappeared.
Koenig felt that he himself was being read like the newspaper or a hundred-year-old novel.
"The Queen dead! Kaiser dead!" the voices shouted.
And it flashed through him those trunks were not wood but that the ghosts of slaughtered Indians stood there in the mangrroves, their eyes like fireflies in the green dark, and that like hummingbirds they sailed rather than ran between the trees.
The river carried him past his shouted words.
The schooner had gone down without a trace.
"There was a time when we ruled everything," Koenig sang to his corrugated white reflection.
"The German Eagle and the British Lion, we ruled worlds wider than this river flows, worlds with dyed elephants, with tassled howdahs, tigers that carried the striped shade when they rose from their palm coverts; men shall not see these days again; our flags sank with the sunset on the dhows of Egypt; we ruled rivers as huge as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Congo, we tamed, we ruled you when our empires reached their blazing peak.
" This was a small creek somewhere in the world, never mind where - victory was in sight.
Koenig laughed and spat in the brown creek.
The mosquitoes now were singing to the night that rose up from the river, the fog uncurled under the mangroves.
Koenig clenched each fist around his barge-pole scepter, as a mist rises from the river and the page goes white.
Written by Robert Hayden | Create an image from this poem

O Daedalus Fly Away Home

 (For Maia and Julie) 

Drifting night in the Georgia pines, 
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is juba, night is congo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is an African juju man weaving a wish and a weariness together to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away Do you remember Africa? O cleave the air fly away home My gran, he flew back to Africa, just spread his arms and flew away home.
Drifting night in the windy pines; night is laughing, night is a longing.
Pretty Malinda, come to me.
Night is a mourning juju man weaving a wish and a weariness together to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away


Written by John Berryman | Create an image from this poem

Dream Song 55: Peters not friendly. He gives me sideways looks

 Peter's not friendly.
He gives me sideways looks.
The architecture is far from reassuring.
I feel uneasy.
A pity,—the interview began so well: I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away and sloshed out a martini strangely needed.
We spoke of indifferent matters— God's health, the vague hell of the Congo, John's energy, anti-matter matter.
I felt fine.
Then a change came backward.
A chill fell.
Talk slackened, died, and began to give me sideways looks.
'Chirst,' I thought 'what now?' and would have askt for another but didn't dare.
I feel my application failing.
It's growing dark, some other sound is overcoming.
His last words are: 'We betrayed me.
'
Written by Nikki Giovanni | Create an image from this poem

Ego Tripping

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky...