When Joyce chose Bloom to be his Ulysses,
His favourite character in literature,
Like Homer he mocked the cult of Hercules,
Which, needless to say, in Zion is secure.
Thus when we met that day on Balfour Street,
I knew my Bloom, the Joycean mensch, I’d found:
Loyal, observant, earthy, kind, discreet,
Prophetic, modest, jocular, wise and sound.
For your sixtieth birthday I composed a rhyme
With phrases Will and T.S. Eliot spun;
You were radiant then and, notwithstanding time,
Are still at eighty blooming in the sun.
So many Happy Returns, my noble friend,
And may your humour chime until the end.
Jerusalem
8 September 2022