Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2026
On Margate Sands, poems by Richard W Halperin.
On Margate Sands
There are no words for how it feels to be alone,
yet the fact that being alone at times feels abnormal
is important.
At age 12, in Chicago, I was reading a T.S. Eliot poem
and came across the phrase ‘On Margate Sands.’
I had no idea what it meant.
At age 82, in Paris, I just reread the poem, came upon
‘On Margate Sands’ and have no idea what it means.
But then and now, it helps.
He touches upon either something or the source
of something or the source of everything.
That calms and reassures me.
Also in Yeats.
A good friend, a theatre man, told me that when
he is in The King of the Great Clock Tower
or Purgatory, without understanding anything
he feels that everything is correct.
That calms and reassures me.
Are Chicago and Paris, are age 12 and age 82,
veils blown out the widow?
In my youth I saw several times Martha Graham
in her ballet Clytemnestra. But I also saw her once
darting out of the 50th Street exit of Saks Fifth Avenue.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is right across the street,
blew out the window.
The Third Annunciation
The Annunciation.
No one knows what happened,
but everyone knows
the result of what happened.
That could be said about almost anything.
Patrick Pye, whose art I live with,
often draws people – and sometimes angels –
with scarves blowing in the wind.
Scarves are not breaths, or are they?
Wuthering Heights is read, but not understood.
Wind is the title.
Heights is the title.
Artists are on to something.
Scarves, let’s call it.
Pots of Paint
In Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard
the Fool dies.
Dorothy Parker’s longest short story
is ‘Big Blonde.’
Those most gifted with wit can portray,
and do, grief.
As an artist, one works with
the pots of paint one is given.
One can call them Muses or pots of paint.
I prefer pots of paint.
Among mine, grief.
The Mother of the Muses is Memory.
I wouldn’t say this at a party,
or maybe I would,
but I think her biggest pot of paint is grief.
Pots of experience.
Thoughts Going Nowhere
like an Origami Peace Crane
Before I met my wife, she and her
entire school class, like many worldwide,
would fold origami peace cranes which
then were shipped to the Children’s
Peace Monument, Hiroshima.
Telling me this, she took a scissors,
cut a small piece out of a paper placemat,
folded it into a peace crane and handed it
to me to flap its wings, because the crane
itself couldn’t flap its own wings.
This past weekend, yet another insane war
begun by fools whom fools have voted for,
who claim that use of nuclear weapons
is both the cause of going to war and –
stockpile stockpile – the best deterrent to war.
Thoughts going nowhere like an origami
peace crane. Peace cranes are made of paper
but they are also made of the human soul.
As I face this terrible morning
flap flap.
If There Is a Difference:
Moonlight in Gallipoli
There is Augustan verse and there is
so-called free verse. If the poem is good,
is there a difference? ‘Is there? Is there?’
has, in my view, no use at all when it comes
to being kind: he who hates his brother is
a murderer. This – and the interpretation
of dreams – is for another poem.
***
In the mist. Sometimes Russian paintings
pull me into them. This evening,
a watercolour by Karl Ivanovich Rabus:
‘Claire de lune, Gallipoli, détroit des
Dardanelles,’ circa 1820. In the exact
centre, a perfect full moon, sharply outlined,
blank-faced. High above it, purplish clouds.
Below it, the path of one pale moonbeam,
crossing the mountains, spilling into
the sea, traversing a wide stretch
of open water, passing under a tiny
iron bridge uniting two town structures,
and arriving in the foreground, a harbour
where a few people are clustered.
The air, which Rabus renders visible –
good artists can do that – may be
a mist. Or – I think of Bishop Berkeley –
the mist may be in me, since I can
only perceive anything through the mist
of my senses, except sometimes.
All of Plato, all the great religions
of the world, and some surprises,
are ‘except sometimes.’
I trace the moonbeam back to its source,
so, back under the tiny iron bridge,
over the wide stretch of open water,
up the dark mountains, into the purplish
sky. The sky has no stars and no stairs.
If there is a difference between the two.
I see, close up, the blank-faced moon.
I also see many people whom it
has been my good fortune to know and to love.
Is love – I am not talking about passion,
although that may be part of it –
always there, sharply outlined, bright?
In the watercolour, Gallipoli is calm.
That would not always be the case.
© 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.