Reliving the Past: A Personal Recount of Memorable Moments

"Those Winter Sundays" by way of Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father were given up early

and positioned his clothes on within the blueblack cold,

then with cracked palms that ached

from exertions within the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the bloodless splintering, breaking.

When the rooms have been warm, he'd name,

and slowly I could rise and get dressed,

fearing the continual angers of that house,

Speaking in this poem about his father and the reminiscences of his early life, Hayden captures the complexity of nostalgia. The speaker recalls the harshness of his father's moves, but nonetheless feels a massive feel of gratitude and love toward him. Through shiny descriptions and intimate details, the poem relives a second within the past, evoking emotions and sensations which are nonetheless present inside the speaker's existence.