Richard W. Halperin is a U.S.-Irish dual national who lives in Paris.

His poetry collections are published by Salmon (five) and by Lapwing (twenty-one). The most recent Salmon, November 2025, is All the Tattered Stars: Selected & New Poems; a poem in it ‘Now, Mother, What’s the Matter?’ was Poem of the Week in the Guardian.

The most recent Lapwing, September 2026, is Wherever It Pleases. Mr Halperin’s work part of  in UCD’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Path of a Few Leaves

A clearing in the woods
in the Irish countryside in October.
On the hard cold bare ground
a sort of path formed by a few leaves
variously fallen. They lead up to
a small guesthouse, white with
a pinkish tinge, maybe the effect of
the morning sun.

I do not take the path. I return to
my rented room to write all this
down. As I begin, I see on hard cold
bare ground a few things variously
fallen: The Trojan Women, Mozart,
‘Bumstead, you’re fired!’ ‘Starry
Night’ – a path of a few leaves.

Green Folder

The pen is new and fresh, the ink is black
and thick. Let’s try:

The sea is sometimes pure green.
That may be what Euripides meant
when he wrote that nothing is so foul
it can’t be washed clean by the sea.

In Jordan I once saw the rock which
Moses struck. Local women were doing
Washing in the resulting pools. The water
Was the colour of water (and soap).
The light in the overhead structure
seemed green.

In my green folder, art to live by
which gives people a place to go
during their tough time.
The important thing is not to lie.

Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn/
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Eliot. ‘Ash Wednesday.’ For me, this hour,
among the greatest lines ever written and
a sort of couplet to boot.

My green folder.
In it, Einstein and Gertrude Stein.
Some experts say a poem shouldn’t rhyme.
Let them call the police.

In it, all of Genji, all of Proust.

In it, many poems by poets whom I know
or – gratitude – knew.

My green folder. It takes up no space at all.

I turn on the news. Some heads of state
simply take up space.

In a Pool of Our Poems

Here we are in a pool of our poems. I think of
other poets – their pools. Do they help,
those pools, someone out there in the dark?

In the light, rather. It takes light, not much,
but some, to read a poem.

So many readers read Murder on the Orient
Express. All those pages because of
the murder of one child.

So many readers read ‘On the Refusal to Mourn
the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,’
now required for many a Leaving Cert.

Here we are in a pool of our poems.

Here we are, again, in wars. In wars in which
a child is bombed to death, burnt to death,
maimed to death. More than one child.

One child is enough.

Enough to say to the murderers, ‘Stop.
You should be tried and convicted.
You should stop reading and hold in your arms
the dead child’

Here we are in a pool of our poems.
Again.

Path of a Few Leaves

This submission will be included in the print edition of The Galway Review 15 anthology, which is scheduled for publication in April 2027.