A WINTER'S tale that touches the heart with its uncomfortable truths about adult selflessness and youthful coldness.

Robert Hayden's poem was included in the BBC compilation, The Nation's Favourite Poems of Childhood.

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got

up early

and put his clothes on in the blue-black cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labour 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?