Reading and Talking English [antikvár]

FEET LIVE THEIR OWN LIFE Langston Hughes (from Simple Speaks His Mind) "If you want to know about my life," saici Simple as he blew the foam from the top of the newly fiiled glass the bartender 1 put before him, "don't look at my face, don't look at my hands. Look at my feet and see if you carl teli how long I've been standing on them." "I cannot see your feet through your shoes," I said. "You needn't see through my shoes," said Simple. "Can't you teli by the shoes I wear - not pointed, not Frenchtoed,2 nothing but big, long, broad, and fiat - that I've been standing on these feet a long time and carrying somé heavy burdens? 3 They are not fiat from standing at a bar, because I always sit at a bar. Can't you teli that? You know I do not hang out4 in a bar unless it has stools, don't you?" "That I have observed," I said, "but I did not connect it with your past life." "Everything I do is connected with my past life," said Simple. "I am still looking at your feet," I said, "and I swear they do not reveal 5 your life to me. Your feet are no open book." "You have eyes but you can't see," said Simple. "These feet have stood on every rock from the Rock of Ages 6 to 135th and Lenox.7 These feet have supported everything from a cotton bale to a hungry woman. These feet have walked ten thousand miles working for white people and another ten thousand keeping up with colored. These feet have stood at altars, crap8 tables, free lunches,9 bars, graves, kitchen doors, hospitál clinics, WPA 10 desks, social security rail-