To mark National Poetry Day, here's a poem from the American poet Langston Hughes. It was written in 1932.

 Good morning Revolution:
  You are the best friend
  I ever had.
  We gonna pal around together from now on.
  Say, listen, Revolution:
  You know the boss where I used to work,
  The guy that gimme the air to cut expenses,
  He wrote a long letter to the papers about you:
  Said you was a trouble maker, a alien-enemy,
  In other words a son-of-a-bitch.
  He called up the police
  And told’em to watch out for a guy
  Named Revolution

  You see,
  The boss knows you are my friend.
  He sees us hanging out together
  He knows we’re hungry and ragged,
  And ain’t got a damn thing in this world –
  And are gonna to do something about it.

  The boss got all his needs, certainly,
  Eats swell,
  Owns a lotta houses,
  Goes vacationin’,
  Breaks strikes,
  Runs politics, bribes police
  Pays off congress
  And struts all over earth –

  But me, I ain’t never had enough to eat.
  Me, I ain’t never been warm in winter.
  Me, I ain’t never known security –
  All my life, been livin’ hand to mouth
  Hand to mouth.

  Listen, Revolution,
  We’re buddies, see –
  Together,
  We can take everything:
  Factories, arsenals, houses, ships,
  Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
  Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
  (Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
  Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
  All the tools of production.
  (Great day in the morning!)
  Everything –
  And turn’em over to the people who work.
  Rule and run’em for us people who work.

  Boy! Them radios!
  Broadcasting that very first morning to USSR:
  Another member of the International Soviet’s done come
  Greetings to the Socialist Soviet Republics
  Hey you rising workers everywhere greetings –
  And we’ll sign it: Germany
  Sign it: China
  Sign it: Africa
  Sign it: Italy
  Sign it: America
  Sign it with my one name: Worker
  On that day when no one will be hungry, cold oppressed,
  Anywhere in the world again.

  That’s our job!

  I been starvin’ too long
  Ain’t you?

  Let’s go, Revolution!

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