Robert Hayden — Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with the cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear 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