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Maddenation
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden, the first black US poet laureate, is mentioned in Darryl Pinckney’s essay. I thought I’d share Hayden’s best-known poem. I think it is holy.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
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?
Comments
Dad • 06/28/03 • 11:05 AM:A great poem, and another entry worthy of comment that has collected none. Perhaps the task is too daunting. As I read it again today, it occurs to me to write about what makes the poem so moving and good. Poems are notorious for packing great meaning in few words. Here are a few examples that strike me today.
“Sundays too” (he got up early every other day)
blueblack cold (before sunup. Haven’t we all felt that cold, or experienced blue-black as somehow more black than pure black?)
cracked hands tells us all we need to know, but then the author tells us again what those hands were doing the rest of the week.
Hear the cold … who has not heard the snapping of a fire and not associated it with the coming warmth? Who has not heard ice breaking or twigs cracking in the dead of winter?
Chronic angers… so many other days would start out fresh and warm and degenerate into bickering and nastiness for no reason other than the failure to be considerate and kind
Love’s austere and lonely offices Oh man. So good it tears at you. Love is a decision, made in a lonely, sparsely furnished place, to do for another just because promises were made long ago, and expectations were nurtured in young hearts. We don’t know about these things as children, but we remember later in life how fortunate we were, and how important it is to carry on the tradition.
There’s much more in this poem, some I merely didn’t mention, some I wouldn’t notice but you would. This is poetry at its best. Densely packed, full of allusions to life experience and nature and different but instantly intelligible ways of saying things. We are drawn into his world and his feelings. We know more of him and more of ourselves.
Patrick • 06/30/03 • 1:01 AM:I think the poem also maintains a certain mystery about what makes it so good (and maybe it’s not very good to some people, but I think it is widely accepted as a great poem). Or, I think the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. You’re right in breaking it down some, but I also think it’s important to just read the poem over and over and feel it.
Jo • 01/14/04 • 10:44 PM:The father demonstrates his love and sacrifice for the child, and yet the child neither recognizes it nor gives him thanks. This is a reflection of God the Father’s love and sacrifice for the people of the world, and their indifference to Him. …By the way, the good shoes have been polished for church.
Justin • 03/08/04 • 11:23 AM:This poem was the shit.
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