Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2026
An Unopened Letter, poems by Richard W Halperin.
An Unopened Letter
Over decades I have read and reread
Henry James’ great short story
‘The Jolly Corner,’ a middle-aged man
walking constantly through the
deserted house he had been raised in,
sensing the presence there of the being
he would have become had he never left.
Tonight, a sentence early in the tale
leapt off the page at me. The protagonist
tells his confidante that at one point in
his life he came across an unopened letter
which he knew was important and burnt it,
unopened. A love letter? A business letter?
A deed to some property? A summons?
My soul lurched. When I was about thirty,
I came across an unopened letter
which I knew was important and burnt it,
unopened. Only it wasn’t a letter and I
didn’t use a match. My life went forward
the way that it has. Which is not the way
it would have gone had I read – really read –
that letter.
Perfect Circles
Raindrops striking rather still water –
no water is completely still – make
perfect circles or, rather, almost
perfect, because no circle is perfect.
I have noticed these all my life
but now, thanks to the paintings
of Gustave Caillebotte, rain on water,
I have the feeling that they notice
me. That they notice everything,
because what is not an imperfect circle?
Life may not end with death –
that may be village gossip, Hamlet
was open-minded about that.
When one stops living, the circle
closes. But it may close imperfectly –
an imperfect circle which instantly
disappears, a raindrop forming it,
now you see it, now you don’t.
Or do you? I just asked my mother,
and think I heard her from where
rain comes from, or from what rain is.
My mother was an artist: paintings
and dress designs. For her, there was
no difference between circles and ovals.
Only scissors and good instincts.
She Walked Slowly
She walked slowly back to a house
of her youth. She knew that the house’s
paths and walls were gone or half gone.
She walked slowly because she was
not sure she was walking at all.
Later, she wrote a poem about it,
but her walking was the real poem,
fearful and beautiful,
like the pinwheel of the sun
which the crowds had seen at Fatima
and which Pius XII saw in 1950
while walking in his garden,
because nothing is gone, only
half-gone.
I do not know if the woman who was
walking slowly back to a house
of her youth was thinking of pinwheels,
but I am.
Fugitive
´Elle était radieuse et charmante.´
A character in T.S. Eliot’s
The Family Reunion says ´In a world
of fugitives/The person taking the
opposite direction/Will appear to be
running away.’
That was my wife when she was here.
That was a few other people whom I
have had the privilege of knowing.
That was Samson in Samson Agonistes.
That is Niagara Falls.
No one knows what holds things together,
or if indeed they are held together.
Some of the best minds in science say
gravity isn’t. Enid Bagnold wrote
a very good play Call Me Jacky
in which gravity isn’t.
Just to see some people enter a room.
They are almost transfigured already.
Between Two Worlds
Not between Ireland and France.
Between two worlds within myself.
Because of this, I like to think of
lakes, not of the sea. Quiet waters.
Although lakes are dangerous.
I like to think of Nōh plays.
When the actor tips, very slightly,
his mask up: happiness. When he tips,
very slightly, his mask down: sorrow.
Great sorrow.
Between two worlds.
When Bernadette, in the convent,
had to agree to be officially
photographed and, if asked, to give
the photo, now pasted on a little card,
to visitors, she wrote on each card
‘p.p.b.’ Priez pour Bernadette.
Presented to Malcolm
‘Presented to Malcolm by the Baptist
Boys Club, April 27 1954.’ This,
in beautifully formed letters, is written
in the inner cover of my used copy of
the Everyman’s Library Poetical Works
of John Milton. I open it, as I often have done,
in the morning, this morning the day
after the beginning of another terrible war
begun by fools voted into office,
so begun by millions of fools. No one
voted in Milton’s time but, in the same
manner as now, blood ran in the name
of Something. A friend wrote me in
2024 after an election in a country
unnecessary to name, ‘I feel that hell
is empty and all the devils are out.’
My friend lives with the balm of poetry,
with the balm of her own art – collages –
which is a balm for others, and with
the attempted balm of being a kind
person. In the beginning was The Word,
which means in the very beginning
something started which was entirely
clean. What happened after is not my business,
although I live in what happened. As I
wrote those last five words, Sunday church bells
began to ring. That also happens mornings.
This poem is a letter to, and a prayer for,
Malcolm, wherever he is in 2026.
Malcolm, I hope Milton helped. ‘I thought
I saw my late espousèd saint’ helps me.
There are helpers and there are destroyers.
There are fools and fools. It is very
humbling to know oneself a fool.
Good luck, Malcom, and may that,
and truth, be with you.
© Richard W Halperin
Richard W. Halperin holds U.S.-Irish dual nationality and lives in Paris. On 1 November 2025, Salmon Poetry/Cliffs of Moher brought out All the Tattered Stars: Selected & New Poems, Introduction by Joseph Woods, which showcases 92 poems published by Salmon and by Lapwing/Belfast since 2010 and 26 new poems. On 7 January 2026, Mr Halperin was Special Guest Reader in the First Wednesday Poetry and Open-Mic Series, White House Bar, Limerick.