Langston Hughes
Afro-American Fragment
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Not even memories alive
Save those that history books create,
Save those that songs
Beat back into the blood
Beat out of blood with words sad-sung
In strange un-Negro tongue
So long,
So far away
Is Africa.
Subdued and time-lost
Are the drumsand yet
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand,
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearnings lost
Without a place
So long,
So far away
Is Africa's
Dark face.

Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of
Langston Hughes, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.