Patrick DePeters

Explication: Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

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?

Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Source: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985)

—

            Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays is written in a nostalgic tone with plenty of imagery and detailed descriptions that evoke emotion both for the writer, and for the reader. The poem contains three stanzas; the first has 5 lines, the second 4 line, and third five lines. Hayden’s poem offers a third person perspective, a first person experience, a brief interaction between Hayden and his father, and concludes with a reevaluation of family, specifically fatherly, love.

            The title of the poem indicates that the poem is written wistfully, about “Winter Sundays” that were long ago and remind the speaker of something significant. We can assume that the speaker of this poem is Robert Hayden, reflecting back on his childhood at a mature age. The first line indicates that Hayden’s father got up early on Sundays, just as he had done every other day of the week. Sunday, the sacrosanct day of rest, was not as restful for Hayden’s father as it was for everyone else.

The first line has enjambment from the first to the second line, which notes that the father put on his clothes “in blueblack cold”. The phrase “blueblack cold” contains alliteration, and it emphasizes just how bitterly cold it was on “those winter Sundays”. Something that is “blueback cold” has a connotation of being dead. The third line indicates that he put on these clothes, in the bitter cold, with “cracked hands that ached.” The fathers cracked, and aching hands signify two things; one, that he works in manual labor throughout the week, and his hands are exhausted and overused, and second, that the harsh cold has caused his hands to hurt, and crack because of dryness. The weekday weather made “banked fires blaze” demonstrating that the present coldness made the fireplace ablaze frequently. The final phrase, “No one ever thanked him” is our first clue that shares with the reader that Hayden is remorseful for not thanking his father for keeping their home warm. Members of the family simply took their fathers selflessness for granted.

            In the second stanza, Hayden speaks for the first time in the first person perspective. Hayden tells the reader that he would “wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.” Hayden plays with language in this way, and figuratively implies that the cold is actually splintering and breaking, when in fact, it is the wood crackling in the fireplace that emits sound. Hayden’s father would wait until the rooms were warm enough to get up in to wake up the rest of the family. Hayden would slowly “rise and dress” because he felt the persistent “angers of that house.” It is unclear exactly what Hayden is referring to in this line. One can deduce that Hayden came from a broken home in which anger and belligerence took place often. Perhaps Hayden put on clothes so that he could leave the house and get away from the problems in his life.

            The final stanza introduces the first interaction between Hayden and his father. The first stanza was a third person vantage point that viewed the actions of the father. The second stanza was the first person experience of living in the house. And now, we learn that Hayden “[spoke] indifferently to him,” the man “no one ever thanked,” and the man “who had driven out the cold/ and polished [his] good shoes”.

And finally, in the concluding couplet, Hayden asks of himself, “What did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices.” Here, he personifies love, giving love the ability to own something, and also to understand solitude. The love in Hayden’s family was somber and grave, and at the time, unsavory. Hayden did not know that love could be concealed by a façade of “lonely offices.”  Now, however, at a later age, he has come to realize that his father cared a great deal for him, and even though it wasn’t expressed through words, his actions—such as heating the home and polishing his shoes, spoke thousands of words regarding his love for Hayden.