Breakfast With Thom Gunn Poem 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.