[975] Those Winter Sundays

Guest poem sent in by Aamir Ansari <aamir_ansari@>

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?

   -- Robert Hayden

I came across this poem in an anthology I'd bought at a flea market. I was
touched by its heartfelt admission of the deep regret that follows youth as
insight develops with the passage of time. The insistent reproach ("What did
I know, what did I know/ of love's austere and lonely offices) makes it
particularly heart-breaking. A haunting poem, not easily forgotten.

Aamir

Links:

  Biography of Hayden: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=200

From: Soccera185@

Tell me what you think the setting is, narrators is, and the ideas of the 
peom for Those Winter Sundays.

From: "Jo Ellen McCord" <jomccord@>