[ Post New Message | Post Reply to this One | Send Private Email to ilza | Help ]

Response to Robert Hayden's - The Whipping Who is the boy being whipped?

from ilza (ilza@pobox.com)
another heart-breaking poem :

Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback 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?

(posted 8811 days ago)

[ Previous | Next ]