Couturière

Quite a small child, I would sit cross-legged
And watch my mother at her work table

Cutting out from a pattern a dress
She had designed. Her life was disorganised

But not at that table. She would lean
Steadily into the cloth and cut cut cut,

Crescents and big zig-zags of fabric
Falling on the floor and mounting up

Around me. I now realise that that
Is how I learned what art is. The ruthless

Cutting away of anything which was
Preventing beauty.

Richard W Halperin holds Irish-US dual-nationality and lives in Paris. His fourth collection for Salmon/Cliffs of Moher is Catch Me While You Have the Light, 2018; People in a Diary is listed for 2021. His twelfth collection for Lapwing/Belfast is Under the Olive Tree, 2020; Richard Dalloway in Wisconsin is listed for 2021. Mr Halperin’s work is part of the UCD Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Read more of Richard here.