Your weekly poem: Harlem
🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away…
“Harlem”—or What happens to a dream deferred? 🌿
🌻 What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? 🌻
— Langston Hughes (1901-1967)
🪴 Langston Hughes was one of the most powerful voices of the Harlem Renaissance—a poet, a civil rights writer, and a master of saying everything that needs to be said in as few words as possible. This poem is a masterclass in that.
📌 As we explore it together, I invite you to hold Hughes’ question on a personal level:
What happens to YOUR dream deferred?
🪴Hughes opens with a simple question: what happens to a dream that is postponed?
He then offers a series of images, each one a possible fate for the delayed pursuit of one’s hopes and dreams.
🌱 Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?—something once full of juice and life, shrivelled by neglect and heat.
And yet, even a raisin, if not discarded or considered “dead”, can still be consumed. And when we do, its sweetness is ten times stronger than a grape’s… the sweetness of a promise finally fulfilled—even if at an advanced age.
🌱 Or fester like a sore—and then run?—in this scenario, the dream becomes infected, festering until it finally breaks open.
I wonder if this is what happens when we start resenting ourselves—and maybe even our loved ones—for never having tried.
And yet, even here, there is a sense of relief in that image. The intense pain relief when the sore finally runs, because that’s when healing can finally begin. It might leave a scar, sure, but also the promise of a new beginning.
🌱 Does it stink like rotten meat?—decay. Something that was once nourishing, now putrid.
I initially imagined the sad sight of what once was a juicy steak—which once was a living cow—butchered to fill a man’s hunger only to be left out for so long—untouched, unconsumed, sacrificed for nothing.
And then I wondered: what if a stinking dream is like a crying baby—trying to get our attention in the only way it can: by stinking up the place? Demanding attention.
🌱 Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?— a dream that hardens and crusts over, and while it may still look sweet on the outside, it’s probably now too hard to consume or enjoy.
Maybe it gets relegated to a shelf instead—like an artefact in a museum, too precious to throw away, yet too old for consumption. Neither dead nor alive. Waiting…
🌱 Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.—the accumulated weight of carrying something unrealised, day after day.
Given my gender and age, the first image that came to mind was that of an old woman’s saggy breasts—once perky and firm, now thin and shriveled, pulling further and further down towards gravity, day after day.
The memory of what once was, and could have still been, but no longer is.
🌱 Or does it explode?—what a genius way to end this poem. After all the domestic images of drying and sagging and festering, we are reminded that a deferred dream can also be a ticking Bomb.
Its unrealized energy and potential become, at some point, too much to contain and the only way left is an outward forceful expression.
Sometimes you can only defer a dream for so long before something gives.
A seed of hope
🪴 Given its title “Harlem”, it’s safe to assume Hughes was referring to the African American dreams of equality, dignity, and freedom that had been systematically deferred by racism, segregation, and broken promises.
And yet, as with any great poem, it works equally well on a personal level.
Any one of us who has ever postponed something important—a career change, a creative ambition, a relationship—will smell the stink and feel the heavy load.
But the poem also holds seeds of hope.
For a dream deferred is neither dead nor forgotten.
In every one of Hughes’ images, the dream is simply changing form, trying to grab our attention, hoping to be noticed—so that we can finally pick it up and decide: do we toss it away for good, or do we breathe life into it?
📌 What will you be choosing today?
🦋 Happy weekend everyone! 🦋
With love,
Dina 🫶🏽
PS: All em dashes are my own 😉.
PPS: Hi, I’m Dina—an executive and transition coach. And if you’re wondering whether how you are living your life today is how you want to spend the next ten to fifteen years of your career, let’s chat. No need to defer your dreams any further. I’m only one DM away. 🤗
Resources:
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This week’s song is I DREAM A WORLD. It’s a famous choral song based on Hughes’ powerful 1941 poem of the same name. Lyrics:
I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!
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