Sign-Inventory 1, Week 6

Shit. Week 6 already...


Those Winter Sundays 
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.

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?

--The poem is about five sentences long

--The first stanza uses alliteration repeatedly, as in "blueback" and "weekday weather."

--The poem changes subject from the first to following stanzas by breaking the complex sentence structure with a simple sentence, "No one ever thanked him."

--The second and third stanzas are connected in an continuation of one sentence. 

--In the first stanza, the syllabic structure is 10-10-7-10-10. 10 syllables also end the final lines of the second and third stanzas. 

--Only the final line poses a question throughout the work. 

--There is a repetition of cold and warmth throughout the work from the "blueback cold" in the first stanza to the "driven out cold" in the last stanza.

--Lines in each stanza follow a 5-4-5 scheme.