Recently discovered, this poem by Robert Hayden.
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 know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
It speaks of the sacrifices many parents make, showing children love in ways they cannot at that stage appreciate, but may come to later. This poem sketches the father's (then unappreciated) work: many mothers do the same, maybe more so. Robert Hayden was American (1913-1980). This poem is dated 1962. "The poem is about the father/son relationship – recalling the poet's memories of his father, realizing that despite the distance between them there was a kind of love, real and intangible, shown by the father's efforts to improve his son's life, rather than by gifts or demonstrative affection. The author's words suggest that the son feels remorse that he failed to recognise this in his father's lifetime." (Wiki). The 'father' here was in fact Hayden's foster father.
I like the use of 'offices' ("What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?"). Clergy are canonically required to 'say the Offices' of Morning and Evening Prayer. Many don't. In the Olden Days you'd need to have the Office book, a bible and other material to see what 'extras' were needed on that particular day. Now, it is all there on your tablet or phone. Convenient Offices, you might say. But there's nothing convenient about sacrificial love. That's its point and its value.
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 know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
It speaks of the sacrifices many parents make, showing children love in ways they cannot at that stage appreciate, but may come to later. This poem sketches the father's (then unappreciated) work: many mothers do the same, maybe more so. Robert Hayden was American (1913-1980). This poem is dated 1962. "The poem is about the father/son relationship – recalling the poet's memories of his father, realizing that despite the distance between them there was a kind of love, real and intangible, shown by the father's efforts to improve his son's life, rather than by gifts or demonstrative affection. The author's words suggest that the son feels remorse that he failed to recognise this in his father's lifetime." (Wiki). The 'father' here was in fact Hayden's foster father.
I like the use of 'offices' ("What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?"). Clergy are canonically required to 'say the Offices' of Morning and Evening Prayer. Many don't. In the Olden Days you'd need to have the Office book, a bible and other material to see what 'extras' were needed on that particular day. Now, it is all there on your tablet or phone. Convenient Offices, you might say. But there's nothing convenient about sacrificial love. That's its point and its value.