Langston Hughes

Prayer

Exact repetition

The entire first stanza repeats verbatim. Not variation—mechanical repetition, like a prayer said twice or a mind stuck in a loop.

I ask you this:
Which way to go?
I ask you this:

Exact repetition

The entire first stanza repeats verbatim. Not variation—mechanical repetition, like a prayer said twice or a mind stuck in a loop.

Which sin to bear?

Not 'which sin to avoid'—he's asking which burden of guilt to carry. The question assumes sin is inevitable, only the choice remains.

Which sin to bear?
Which crown to put

Which crown

Crowns mean both achievement and Christ's crown of thorns. The ambiguity is deliberate—is he asking about glory or suffering?

Upon my hair?
I do not know,
Lord God,
I do not know.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Unanswered Prayer

Hughes wrote this during the Harlem Renaissance, when Black Americans faced impossible choices: assimilate or resist, accommodate or protest, pursue individual success or collective liberation. "Which way to go" isn't abstract—it's the daily question of how to survive in a country that demands you choose between dignity and safety.

The repetition is the poem's argument. Prayer is supposed to bring clarity, but here it brings only the same questions asked again. The second stanza doesn't develop or resolve—it's stuck. This isn't the structure of a psalm (which typically moves from complaint to praise) but of desperation.

"Which sin to bear" reveals the trap: every path forward requires moral compromise. The question isn't whether to sin but which sin is least damaging. For Hughes's audience, this was literal—take a job that exploits your own community, or watch your family starve? Speak up and risk violence, or stay silent and betray yourself? The poem offers no answer because there isn't one.

What Hughes Cuts

Notice what's missing: no description of God, no theological language, no scripture references, no confession of faith. Just questions. The title says "Prayer" but the poem never actually asks God for help—only for information.

"Lord God" appears only in the refrain "I do not know, / Lord God, / I do not know." The divine name is surrounded by human ignorance. Traditional prayer moves from question to trust; Hughes's prayer ends where it begins.

The simplicity is deceptive. Eight-line stanzas, mostly monosyllables, basic rhyme scheme (go/know, bear/hair)—it reads like a spiritual or hymn. But hymns provide answers. This provides only the experience of asking and not receiving, repeated until the repetition itself becomes the meaning.