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]

Yes, I believe the two simply co-exist. The father was blamed for the chronic angers of the house while never thanked for the warmth of the house, and such.

The ending is also interesting if you look at it metaphorically. It is clear from this line: << cracked hands that ached / from labor in the weekday weather >> that his father did not do office work. He did manual labor. And yet - just like the banker or the lawyer or the doctor - his father spent time in his own "austere and lonely office." And he did it for love.

Perhaps it is a poem of forgiveness.