Our little word “might” pulses with possibility and potency: what we might achieve with all our might.

                  Yesterday we wondered at the might of Robert Hayden’s little poem, “Those Winter Sundays.” I realized, after sharing the poem with Jane, I had not done with it or, rather, it with me. 

                  We do not so much read a poem as wear it, trying its fit and look in different weathers. Prose we can put to bed, knowing what it told us, but a poem, like a song, sings on, defying deletion, overriding thought.

                  The theme and music of “Those Winter Sundays” help explain its might, but what really gets us is its sermon. A mighty poem teaches, though we may not detect it. Homilies Reason can resist but not experience. Felt truth is irresistible.

                  The poet hints he’s preaching from his first words. Sundays we arm ourselves against perorations. Whether we attend worship services, we’ve time on Sundays to ponder, wonder who we are and if we’re headed right.

                  The son here resents his father’s noisy ministrations. Jeez, it’s Sunday morning – and cold – why can’t he sleep in!  His body’s urge to loll resents the disturbance – and by whom! This weather-beaten unimpressive blue-collar dad the son, in his imagination, has already outgrown. Almost automatically does his annoying dad rise in the dark, stoke the stove, polish his son’s “good shoes” – we sense, without being told, drab old dad doesn’t have a pair of “good shoes” – and for what reward? “No one ever thanked him.” What kind of loser (we’re thinking the son’s thoughts, who longs to keep sleeping) strives for no pay!

                  The son’s contemptuous indifference intends to give old dad a piece of mind. But then, ouch, like a thunderbolt, comes the realization, repeated twice, it hurts so much: “What did I know, what did I know?” Poor old dad, in his uncomplaining humility, was doing what was right, the magnificent and mighty thing – loving! Because love was his “office,” that is, religious duty, and even if those duties are hard and lonely, he does them – humbly – without complaint. That, the son realizes too late, is the way of the saint. That was his dad’s – and the poem’s – mighty Sunday sermon.

                  Our American moment is that boy clinging to his warm bed, favoring cozy comfort to the hard work of responsible being. Let someone else bank the fire and shine our shoes, we want to sleep. Only now are we waking to the terrible cost of our lazy neglect. “What did I know, what did I know” we almost wail, as we witness our precious state’s destruction. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” only – perhaps – our remorse comes too late.

                  Love, this little poem persuades us, does what is right – not for reward, even the reward of gratitude, but because it is right. “Love is patient,” as an earlier poet put it, “love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

                  How might our world be bettered by the might of love! How might each of us be bettered! “What did I know, what did I know.” We rue our neglect! But it is not too late – to wake up, realize “love’s austere and lonely offices.” That is the hidden peroration of Hayden’s Sunday sermon.

                  Amen.

* 

Those Winter Sundays 

Robert Hayden (1913-1980) 

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?