Robert Hayden

Those Winter Sundays
A poignant poem by Robert Hayden about familial love, sacrifice, and a father's silent devotion.
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Francesca McConchieFirst to rec“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 know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
Matt Medendorp“A powerhouse of a poem about fatherhood from that second word, "Sundays too" to that last, "love's austere and lonely offices?"”
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