'Those Winter Sundays' (poem) written by Robert Hayden

 This poem is from his 'Collected Poems,' published by Liveright Publishing Corporation (1966)

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached 

from labour 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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