Sunday Night Poetry

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?