THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS - ROBERT HAYDEN
ROBERT HAYDEN is one of the most
honoured Afro-American poets. His poems have been praised for their exquisite
handling of traditional verse-forms and a range of themes drawn from
Afro-American history, myth, folklore and heroic adventures.
Hayden’s ‘Those Winter Sundays’
is a short moving lyric about the belated recognition by a son of his father’s
acts of love and kindness. The poem is both recollection and recognition. It is
an act of paying homage to his father by recollecting his father’s ‘love’s austere
and lonely offices’
The nostalgia of the poem ‘Those
Winter Sundays’ is set to transport the
poet to bygone days of his childhood to recollect all his childhood memories.
His father had made no exception even on acute winter Sundays to go to work instead
of attending the traditional Sabbath. In spite of his aching cracked hands due
to severe cold of the winter he used to go to work all the days of the week
from morning till evening to keep his family warm and comfortable.
As a child the poet could not recognize
his father’s selfless sacrifice and dedication who relentlessly working for the
welfare of his family with complete devotion. He was sacrificing himself to his
family how the fresh wood in the fire is splintering and breaking into smaller
pieces to keep the rooms warm. The poet was indifferent to his father though
his father trying to do everything for him including polishing his good shoes.
Now as an adult the poet is
grieving for the loss of his father that he could not understand his father
properly when he was alive. He did not know of his father’s love’s austere and
lonely offices. He could only pay homage to his father who had kept his family warm
and comfortable with all his efforts of hard work.
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