Those Winter Sundays

Those Winter Sundays 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 knowof love's austere and lonely offices?

by Robert Hayden