1. Those Winter Sundays
      2. By Robert Hayden



      Those Winter Sundays



      By Robert Hayden



      Sundays too my father got up early

      and put his clothes on in the blueblack 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?


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