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The Black Finger

1880 –

1958

I have just seen a most beautiful thing,

Slim and still,

Against a gold, gold sky,

A straight black cypress,

Sensitive,

Exquisite,

A black finger

Pointing upwards.

Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?

And why are you pointing upwards?

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston on February 27, 1880. She was the daughter of Archibald Grimké, who had been born a slave in Charleston, South Carolina, and Sarah Stanley Grimké, a white woman and the daughter of an abolitionist. Named after her great-aunt, the abolitionist and suffragist, Angelina Grimké Weld, Grimké grew up in liberal, aristocratic Boston society. She attended the best preparatory schools in Massachusetts, including Cushing Academy and the now defunct Carleton School.

About Angelina Weld Grimké

Themes

About this Poem

"The Black Finger" appeared in The New Negro: An Interpretation (Albert & Charles Boni, Inc., 1925).

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More by this poet

Surrender

We ask for peace. We, at the bound
O life, are weary of the round
In search of Truth. We know the quest
Is not for us, the vision blest
Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned,
We go, with heads bowed to the ground,
And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned.

Angelina Weld Grimké

2025

Greenness

Tell me is there anything lovelier,
Anything more quieting
Than the green of little blades of grass
And the green of little leaves?

Is not each leaf a cool green hand,
Is not each blade of grass a mothering green finger,
Hushing the heart that beats and beats and beats?

Angelina Weld Grimké

1927

The Eyes of My Regret

Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
To the same well-worn rock;
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun
The same tints—rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;

Angelina Weld Grimké

1927

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The Black Finger

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