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.breaking. / When In A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), the line between these two lines reads: “and smell the iron and velvet bloom of heat.” While this line was deleted, the version in A Ballad of Remembrance is still a sonnet. There are other variants between both versions; mostly relating to where the line breaks.

When breaking. / When In A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), the line between these two lines reads:”and smell the iron and velvet bloom of heat.” While this line was deleted, the version in A Ballad of Remembrance is still a sonnet. There are other variants between both versions; mostly relating to where the line breaks. 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 who had In A Ballad of Remembrance: who’d driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austereaustere Grave, sober; and lacking adornment and lonely offices?

• Arts & Sciences
• Living
• Relationships

Poet Bio

Born Asa Bundy Sheffey into a poor family, Robert Hayden’s parents left him to be raised by foster parents. Due to extreme nearsightedness, Hayden turned to books rather than sports in his childhood. Some of his best-known poems can be found in his collection A Ballad of Remembrance. Hayden was the first African American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. See More By This Poet

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