THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS by 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? John CLARKE, 54, Chevy Chase, MD, nominated this poem that was included in "Americans' Favorite Poems,' eds. Pinsky & Dietz (Norton 2000), and commented - "I first heard the poem about 20 years ago when I started working at the Library of Congress and Robert Hayden read at a gathering ...The poem really struck me then and has haunted me ever since. It was around the time my son was born, too. But it reminds me of the relationship between my grandfather and my father and also somewhat of the relationship between my father and myself. My grandfather was an Irish immigrant who was a widower at an early age and raised six boys; my father was the oldest. I guess my grandfather, my uncles have told me, had to be particularly hard, even though he was very loving towards my father. My father later became a police lieutenant in New York City and although they're from an Irish-American background and Robert Hayden grew up in an African-American background, at these deep human levels, the particulars don't matter. My father and Robert Hayden were almost exact contemporaries. They were born and died within about a year of each other: 1912 and 1913 and 1980 and 1982." Phyllis BECKER, Kansas City, MO wrote: "Broke my heart and restored it."