When I think of the undercurrent of gravity moving this buoyant, lively poem, somehow I imagine one of those plums of the first line bobbing in a river.

The great African American poet and Harlem Renaissance figure, Langston Hughes, wrote two poems about V.I. Lenin in the 1930s. They reflect the tremendous spirit of hope that the Russian Revolution breathed into the national liberation struggles of Black people in the U.S. and all oppressed peoples around the world.