Those Winter Sundays
Those Winter Sundays is based on the real-life experiences of Robert Hayden, its writer. It talks about how he took his foster parents' love for granted only to regret later, when he grew old enough to understand that they sacrificed to give him a good life. 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 weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one. 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 the 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? Analysis In the first stanza, the persona recounts how his father woke up early just to prepare a fire in order to drive the cold out for the benefit of the persona and the rest of the family. The ...