This is a song for the genius child
Sing it softly, for the song is wild
Sing it softly as you ever can-
Lest the song get out of hand.
Nobody loves a genius child.
Can you love an eagle
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
of frightening name?
Nobody loves a genius child.
Kill him - and let his soul run wild!
--Langston Hughes
More Hughes here.
No deep meanings, except I seemed to have a collected a lot of quotes about special snowflakes when I was 18. I suppose it's one of the milder manifestations of an inflated self-opinion.
Langston Hughes is of the greatest of the poets. He considered himself one of the Talented Tenth - one of the top tenth of a community or population that lifts up everyone else. On most people, that kind of hubris is just irritating, but on Langston Hughes, like on Cicero or T.S. Eliot, it is tolerable, only because I concede his point: he's amazing. A wonderful poet. It's okay that he knows it.
beautiful!
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