Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
The Planet Jupiter, poems by Richard W Halperin.
The Planet Jupiter
for Scott Thornley and Shirley Blumberg
It was in the house of friends in Le Lot,
a fifteenth century house, modernised,
of honey-coloured stone particular to Le Lot,
that I first heard, on a CD,
the BBC recording, 1927, of Beatrice Harrison
playing the cello at night in her Surrey garden
as a nightingale joined her, ‘Danny Boy’
and ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’: the ribbon
of plangent sound which was hers alone;
the song of the nightingale; and the sound
of the night which the microphones picked up,
because the quiet of a night is sound.
Later, on the CD, a recording, also BBC,
also in Surrey, also at night, 1942,
nightingales in a garden singing continually
as 197 bombers approached, then flew over,
on their way to bomb Mannheim. Songs
my mother taught me. She had known bombs –
Belfast, before she left for America in 1922;
she certainly had known loveliness; and so do
I know both, perhaps in my genes. As I write
these lines, January 2025, Paris, the news announces
this and that about the recent deaths of
a former head of state, American, compassionate;
and a former head of a political party, French,
monstrous. I needn’t name either. History will
remember one, and kick dirt on the other.
The planet Jupiter pulls the earth’s orbit
so that instead of a perfect ellipse, the orbit
is imperfect. And what pulls Jupiter, please?
Nothing is explained, and a nightingale sings.
Deer and Stream
I look at a mosaic, 12th century,
of a deer drinking from a stream
which runs next to one of the Pyramids.
The stream is clean and clear. The deer
is smiling.
There is no stream near the Pyramids.
There is only the Nile. There are no deer.
That is not the climate for them.
I look, and illusion, mine, blows away.
Now I can see. What is best – I speak of value –
in the world I am born into? Clean clear water.
Easily available is the best of that best.
I think of Psalm 47: ‘With my harp,
I will resolve my problem.’ Some art
is my harp. Deer, water, pyramid, a moment
apart.
I have reread recently two Graham Greenes:
The Confidential Agent and The Ministry of Fear.
He is a poet of guilt. He is a poet of the sense
of sin. He is adept, from experience, in portraying
a world of gratuitous deception, of cruel
or stupid (the two
are indistinguishable as regards harm)
manipulation. He pivots, as does Henry James
whom he admires, his masterpieces upon
the reality of evil. Upon gratuitous
harmers. Upon the effects of harm
on the innocent. What has this to do
with deer, streams, clean water, pyramid?
He leaves the answer to his harp.
With his harp, he plays his problem.
His harp makes my life, if not easier, easier.
Joanne Woodward
In Paris this evening in a restaurant
I saw a woman who resembled Joanne Woodward.
It brought back something only time, not film,
knows. I had seen Joanne Woodward in films.
But nothing prepared me for seeing her on stage.
Middle-aged. As Candida. She glowed. It had
nothing to do with lighting. It may have had
something to do with Shaw’s portrayal of
the eternal feminine, but I doubt it. Some,
hardly any, stage actors glow. You can see it.
I think they do not know it. I have seen people,
more than a few, who glowed. In a sitting room.
On a bus. People write about the ineffable:
Is it? Might it be? If it is, what is it? Dear thinkers,
if you have seen it, it is an experience. It is
different from hope. It is.
© Richard W Halperin
Richard W. Halperin’s is a U.S.-Irish dual national living in Paris. His collections are published by Salmon (four to date since 2010) and Lapwing (18 to date since 2014).
In March 2025, Salmon will bring out Selected & New Poems, Introduction by Joseph Woods, drawing upon these collections and including thirty new poems.
Mr Halperin’s work is part of University College Dublin’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive. He reads frequently in Ireland; his most recent reading (on YouTube now) was at the Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend, Achill, Co. Mayo, last May.