Those Winter Sundays - Robert Hayden

[backseat.livejournal.com]

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up 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 angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Comments

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

In NYC, they have "featured poems" on the buses and subways. This was one of them. I remember really digging it at the time.

[goodfoot08.livejournal.com]

The commentary I have seen on this makes much of Hayden's abusive childhood. I honestly have a hard time seeing that in this, other than the "chronic angers" in the second stanza.

The balance always reminds me, favorably, of my father's help with my Sunday morning paper route when he could have been in bed.

[synecdoche.livejournal.com]

I love the last two lines in this. ♥

[herquivers.livejournal.com]

this poem speaks to me; it doesn't remind me of my father, or of anyone else's father that i know, but it gives off that fatherly aura.
of a presence that is above you and is meant to make you feel okay in the coldest of times.

[glass-doll.livejournal.com]

i adore it

makes me feel like its november

[desolateangel83.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite poems! When I studied Creative Writing in college, we went over this poem a lot.