What Does Blueblack Cold Mean?

Then the speaker tells us just how early his father wakes; it's “blueblack” outside. Which means it's before sunrise. And it's super cold out. Even the word itself feels cold. When we hear “blueblack,” we feel like were being thwacked in the face by a cold wind.

What is Blueblack cold?

Hayden uses a technique call synesthesia when he writes "blueblack cold. " In poetry, synesthesia is when you use one sense (like sight) to describe another (like touch). For example, "cold" is something that you feel, but Hayden describes it as a color.

What does the last line of those winter Sundays mean?

But built into the final phrase of the poem—“love's austere and lonely offices”—is an incredibly complex view of parental love. What are we getting at? Well, through the word “office,” love is presented as a duty, as a form of worship, as a responsibility, as an official job. It can be all those things at once.