Those Winter Sundays

Sundays to my father gor ur early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
Then with cracked hands that ached
From labor in the weekday weather made
Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
And slowly I would rise and dress,
Fearing the chronic angersof that house,

Speaking indirerently to him,
Who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoesas well.
What did I know; what did I know
Of love's austere and lonely offices?



By Robert Hayden (1913-1980)