Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden, 1913 - 1980
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?
- What is this poem about?
- How would you describe the speaker's father and the relationship between the poem's speaker and his father?
MY PAPA'S WALTZ
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
- What is this poem about?
- How would you describe the speaker's father?
Finally how are the visions of both fathers different?