After Winter by Sterling Allen Brown

In honor of Black History, I offer a poem by my most beloved African-American poet, Sterling Allen Brown, called After Winter. I love Brown so much because of his reverence for folk life and authentic language despite his privileged upbringing and education at Williams College and Harvard. He taught the first course in Afro-American literature in the United States in the English Department at Howard University in Washington, DC, where Toni Morrison was among his students. The greatest privilege of my life was my time teaching in that department at that esteemed and wonderful university.

After Winter

He snug­gles his fin­gers
In the blacker loam
The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.

His eyes are set
On a brushwood-fire
But his heart is soar­ing
Higher and higher.

Though he stands ragged
An old scare­crow,
This is the way
His swift thoughts go,

“But­ter beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn fo’Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

“Radishes and let­tuce
Egg­plants and beets
Turnips fo’ de win­ter
An’ can­died sweets.

“Home­spun tobacco
Apples in de bin
Fo’ smok­ing’ an’ fo’ cider
When de folks draps in.”

He thinks with the win­ter
His trou­bles are gone;
Ten acres unplanted
To raise dreams on.

The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.
His hopes, win­ter wan­der­ers,
Has­ten home.

“But­ter­beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn for Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

Thank you God for poetry.