In looking for a recording of Hayden reading this poem aloud I came across the following interview at the 1976 Brockport Writers Forum, which is definitely worth 15 minutes of your life.

It begins with Hayden introducing his reading of "Those Winter Sundays" with a little context:

It was written for my foster-father who who made it possible for me to go to college and all the rest of it, who was a hardworking man, a Baptist... [...] He cared a great deal for me and when the other boys would have to go out in the summers and work, he would help me to stay in school, and I owe him a great deal... He really cared about me getting an education; he used to say to me, "Get something in your head and you won't have to live like this."

There is a very tender pause after the last line of the poem, at which point Hayden says: "What hurts is that he never lived to know that I cared that much."

[NB The interviewer in this clip, who smokes throughout, is a virtuosic embodiment of central casting middle-age beatnik, and is a thing to behold.]