"Sundays too my father got up early...." Happy Father's Day!

Those Winter Sundays

by 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 labor in the weekday weather
made
Banked fires blaze. No one ever
thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splinter-
ing, 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?