Updated on January 28, 2021
Poem for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labour 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?
Robert Hayden (1913 – 1980)
Perhaps at the beginning of this month you looked back with God over the past year. It has been the strangest and saddest of years, but even so, as we look back with God in prayer, we notice where there has been surprising life and creativity and much to give thanks for, which we might have missed. Look back even further, with Jesus at your side, to see what you never noticed as a child.“What did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” Whose love and care did you take for granted? Give thanks now.
Tina Lamb
This is a beautiful poem but I don’t understand how “austere and lonely offices” fit?
Dear Karen, I’m not sure either exactly what the poet meant by “love’s austere and lonely offices”, but I think he was realising that as a child he had no idea what his father’s life was like, but he could see now that he had not been close to anyone – (there seems to have been a lot of unspoken angry emotion in the house too) and yet his rather solitary father had given himself faithfully and dutifully to the hard practical tasks of caring for him. It was a way of showing his love, but as a boy the son never recognised this.
I’m glad you really engaged with this poem.
Greetings,
Tina