It’s another sorry tale about class in America, I’m sure
		you’re right,
	but you have to imagine how proud we were.

Your grandfather painted a banner that hung from Wascher’s
		Pub
	to Dianis’s Grocery across the street: Reigh Count,

Kentucky Derby Winner, 1928.  
		And washtubs filled
	with French champagne. I was far too young

to be up at the stables myself, of course, it took 
		me years 
	to understand they must have meant in bottles 

in the washtubs, with ice.
		His racing colors
	were yellow and black, like the yellow

cabs, which is how Mr. Hertz first made the money
		that built
	the barns that bred the horses, bred at last this perfect

horse, our hundred and thirty seconds of flat out earth-
		borne bliss.
	They bought the Arlington Racetrack then and Jens

got a job that for once in his life allowed him to pay
		the mortgage
	and the doctors too, but he talked the loose way even

good men talk sometimes and old man Hertz
		was obliged
	to let him go. It was August when the cab strike in

Chicago got so ugly. Somebody must have tipped
 		them off,
	since we learned later on that the Count

and the trainer who slept in his stall had been moved
		to another
	barn. I’ll never forget the morning after: ash 

in the air all the way to town and the smell of those 
		 poor animals,
	who’d never harmed a soul. There’s a nursery

rhyme that goes like that, isn’t there? Never
		did us any
	harm. I think it’s about tormenting a cat.

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
    And he answered, saying:
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him always with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

^{(To F. S.)}

I loved my friend. 
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.