A Winter Twilight

by Angeline Weld Grimké

A silence slipping around like death,
Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath;
One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
Inking their cress ‘gainst a sky green-gold;

One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
And over it softly leaning down,
One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.

^^^

Angeline Weld Grimké (1880–1958) was a Black poet, playwright and journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, whose works often explored themes of race, gender, and emotional introspection. “A Winter Twilight” was first published in 1923 in The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke.

Image by Kalyee Srithnam.