Live Encounters Poetry & Writing June 2025
Poem in Tempore Belli, poems by Richard W. Halperin.
Poem in Tempore Belli
Breaking glass. At seventeen I was given
a summer job in a factory in Chicago
breaking defunct florescent rods.
I did not wear a mask, but here I still am.
The noise of shattering. London,
Dresden, Nagasaki, Kiev.
When I once asked my great-aunt Julia
what had happened to the Halperins
who had not emigrated from Elisabethgrad
to Chicago in 1900, she said
‘They were all killed in Stalingrad.’
Shelley thought the entire universe
was glass, one death can shatter it.
One death does shatter it.
For the end of The Cherry Orchard,
Chekhov specifies the sound of a string
breaking. A great Madame Ranevskaya –
I was lucky enough to see Helen Hayes –
doesn’t need that. One hears without that.
Heart string.
Whatever It Is
In my day, in my culture,
it was Death of a Salesman and
A Streetcar Named Desire.
A little earlier, it was Our Town.
Much earlier, in another culture,
it was Electra. What made people
cry, if they were a certain kind
of sensitive. What made some say
‘That could be I.’
What it is now, via new artists,
I do not need to know.
I was devastated, and still am,
by those I was devastated by.
There is, for some, a play,
a piece of music, a painting,
which one can relate entirely to
in a world of horrors. The world of
Il Trovatore, where a gipsy
throws the wrong baby into the fire,
as opposed to the right baby.
The world of current events.
In this midst, the kindness
of Arthur Miller who, after all,
didn’t have to write anything.
The generosity of my parents
who decided to have a baby,
and so to continue whatever it is.
The kindness of Alice B. Toklas
who entitled her book of letters
Staying on Alone.
Staying on alone.
Continuing to live in
whatever house one lives in,
with whom or without whom,
through courage or inertia
or whatever it is.
Collage
There it is on my wall.
Six inches by ten inches.
I just noticed that she,
the collagist, used
a little twist of paper
to close off one side
of a square.
That she used blue dots
to surround a brown dragonfly.
The weightlessness of it!
Looking, I can put aside
the day’s news – the crushing
weight of it: the crushers,
and the crushed.
I didn’t want to listen to it
anyway. I could say I have
already paid my dues. But,
I haven’t.
Weightless light things.
A friend’s poem. Very brief.
To close it, he puts a cat
in the last line. I like things
which close with a cat.
In a tormented world, it is
the peacemakers and the artists
to whom I relate.
In a radio interview
in French, Isaac Stern
when asked if he thinks about
his future reputation
said that while one is here
one plunges one’s hand
in the river, changing
a tiny part of the flow
for a while.
Painters of Light
after the exhibition Sargent/Sorolla: Peintres
de la Lumière, Petit Palais, 2007
Two women in white summer muslin
walk by the sea in Spain.
Mother and daughter, perhaps, or sisters.
The veils of their hats – we are in 1909 –
flutter in the breeze. Disorder, mine,
is nearby, but they don’t seem to notice.
The light is luminous everywhere.
My recent grief, luminous everywhere.
Light is not peace, but this light is.
A red sun hovers on the horizon.
Copernicus says the sun does not move.
For the first time in my life, I believe him.
© Richard W. Halperin
Richard W. Halperin was born in Chicago, holds U.S.-Irish dual nationality and lives in Paris. His work is part of University College Dublin’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive. This year Salmon Poetry/Cliffs of Moher will bring out All the Tattered Stars: New and Selected Poems, Introduction by Joseph Woods, which draws upon four Salmon collections and sixteen shorter collections via Lapwing Publications/Belfast & Ballyhalbert. In 2024, Lapwing brought out two additional collections: The Painted Word and Three Red Hats.