Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

(1913-1980)

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blue-black 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?

Every once in a while I come across a poem that grabs me. I copy and paste it into a folder called “Keepers.” That’s what I did with this poem and then I kept going back to it. So, rather than needing to look it up on the computer, and because it evokes in me a strong emotional response, I memorized it.

The strong emotional response comes from what I now know is required of a parent and from imagining how both my dad and mom fulfilled “love’s austere and lonely offices.” I believe they lived happy and fulfilling lives but there were sacrifices, long hours, and perseverance. When I think of all they did for me, my sister, and my brothers, most of it beyond our awareness at the time, I am overwhelmed by gratitude and affection. Hayden’s life was more difficult than mine. He moved in and out of foster care. I did not have to fear “chronic angers.” But we share the experience of looking back in time realizing there was a dimension to the life we lived as children that can now be appreciated because we ourselves have dealt with the demands of parenthood.

A prominent tone of the poem is a wistful awareness that his dad did all this and “no one ever thanked him.” That is what makes love’s offices sometimes lonely. My dad died when I was 18. We had a good relationship but, since he died when I was young, I did not have a chance to thank him as an adult and that is part of what draws me to this poem.

Note: Hayden mentions “banked fires,” an image that may be unfamiliar to contemporary readers. Nowadays we have central heating. The practice of having a single hearth to warm the house belongs to another century. Hayden’s phrase, “made banked fires blaze,” refers to the practice of letting the hearth fire burn low overnight by sweeping the embers into a pile that might look like a riverbank. Then, in the morning, the embers are stirred, and some new fuel is added, making the banked fire blaze anew.