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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

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

Your Hands

I love your hands:
They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands;
Hair grows on the back near the wrist . . . .
I have seen the nails broken and stained
From hard work.
And yet, when you touch me,
I grow small . . . . . . . and quiet . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . And happy . . . . . . . .

Angelina Weld Grimké

1927

Paradox

When face to face we stand
And eye to eye,
How far apart we are——
As far, they say, as God can ever be
From what, they say, is Hell.

. . . . .

Angelina Weld Grimké

1927

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The Black Finger

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