Breakfast with Thom Gunn
By Randall Mann
in memory, 1929-2004
We choose a cheap hotel
because they’re serving drinks.
We drink. I hear him tell
a tale or two: he thinks
that so-and-so’s a sleaze;
and then there was the time
that Milosz phoned, oh please.
Another gin with lime?
I want to say that once,
I saw him dressed in leather,
leaning on a fence
inside a bar. Rather,
walking to the N,
I gush about his books;
he gives his change to men
who’ve lost their homes and looks:
how like him, I’ve been told.
Our day together done,
I hug him in the cold.
And then the train is gone.
Randall Mann, "Breakfast with Thom Gunn" from Breakfast with Thom Gunn. Copyright © 2009 by Randall Mann. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source:
Breakfast with Thom Gunn
(The University of Chicago Press, 2009)
