|
|
| 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? |
