Poetry | A Black History Month tribute

Robert Hayden – 1913-1980

Robert Hayden’s poetry, which explored his concerns about race and African-American history, gained international recognition in the 1960s, and Hayden eventually became the first Black American to be appointed as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress.

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.