April 22, 2020, the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov! To Celebrate, Mr. Langston Hughes: ‘Lenin’

‘Lenin’ by Mr. Langston Hughes

Lenin walks around the world.

Frontiers cannot bar him.

Neither barracks nor barricades impede.

Nor does barbed wire scar him.

Lenin walks around the world.

Black, brown, and white receive him.

Language is no barrier.

The strangest tongues believe him.

Lenin walks around the world.

The sun sets like a scar.

Between the darkness and the dawn

There rises a red star.

Also: Mayakovsky’s longer poem written on Lenin’s death (1924) and the one by Bertold Brecht.