Poetry Explication Essay Assignment Prompt: Write a 2 - 2 ½ page explication (analysis) of the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden or the poem “There Is No Word for Goodbye,” by Mary Tallmou

From Mary TallMountain’s volume of poems The Light on the Wall. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

“There Is No Word for Goodbye”

Sokoya, I said, looking through

the net of wrinkles into

wise black pools

of her eyes.

What do you say in Athabascan

when you leave each other?

What is the word

for goodbye?

A shade of feeling rippled  

the wind-tanned skin.

Ah, nothing, she said,

watching the river flash.

She looked at me close.

We just say, Tlaa. That means,

See you.

We never leave each other.

When does your mouth

say goodbye to your heart?

She touched me light

as a bluebell.

You forget when you leave us;

you're so small then.

We don't use that word.

We always think you're coming back,

but if you don't,

we'll see you some place else.

You understand.

There is no word for goodbye.

Sokoya: Aunt (mother's sister)

Tlaa: See you

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?