By David Lehman

I hear the ram's horn.

Do you? Do you remember
father, son, mountain?
L'shana tova
Old friend, mentor, fellow Jew,
you from New Jersey,
I from Manhattan,
and we met not in temple
but Columbia,
and do you recall
when I visited Cambridge
I left you a note
with the Clare porter.
The world is charged (I wrote) with
the grandeur of you!
And then you came home
and I took your place over
there: at Clare College
Peter Ackroyd came
and asked me if I would speak
to the group on John
Ashbery whose new
book "The Double Dream of Spring"
had just been published.
How could I say no?
They told me you had spoken
on Frank O'Hara
and Aaron Fogel
had spoken on Kenneth Koch.
It was a good omen
I thought but then what
happened was rain rain rain and
more rain. And no mail
because of a strike
in England. There was always
a strike in England.
No mail, no phone calls
to America where my
father lay dying.
The gardeners burned
the leaves and I crossed the Cam
on Clare College bridge
daily, and daily
I went to Heffer's and bought
books by Holderlin,
Mann, Gide, Henry James.
I limitated Rilke.
The sonnet for you
ran in "Poetry."
More rain. Cold toilet. Bad smell.
And I couldn't find
as English poet
younger than Larkin to like.
No mail. Pub hours.
Beer better than wine.
Awful food. Always hungry.
Had to learn to cook.
And that's where I went
--to the sea of memory--
in temple today
When I heard the sound
of the shofar and prayed for
the living and dead.

-David Lehman