Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blue black cold.
Then with cracked hands that ached
From labour in the weekdays 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.

I can remember those bitter cold mornings. Thankfully not anymore. But my dad always got up first to see to the fire bless him when I was a child.

Hi Val, don't know who Robert Hayden is, but feel I should, he must have lived in the same street if not the same house as me, perhaps we're brothers.

Dave

He was an African American poet, who often wrote about his experience of being African American but could also turn out these simple lyric poems too.