Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Robert Hayden, American poet who lived from 1913 to 1980.

He was the poet laureate, a consultant in poet who read to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978,

and he was the first African-American writer to hold the office.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called Those Winter Sundays. It goes like this.

Sundays, too, my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blue-black 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?

I think this is a wonderful poem.

It's a poem that is full of so many surprises.

There are so many twists and turns, so to speak.

The first one, I guess, comes with the second line.

The second word, rather, I'm sorry.

Sundays 2, my father got up early.

The whole poem turns or sort of means based on that word two, I think.

It could have said Sundays, my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blue, black, cold. But no, it says Sundays two, my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blue black cold. But no, it says

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