Poem of the Week: They Too

‘And yet they too break hearts – ’
Among School Children by WB Yeats

Joyce’s short poems introduce
the lamentable twentieth century.
I revisit them. I do not understand
most of them, but my soul does.

Where does purity come from?
The song of a thrush. The song
of a New York office colleague
who sang sometimes in the corridor.

A tenor voice. A synagogue cantor.
One note, held two or three seconds
only. When I need consolation,
it is his voice I hear.

These are neither images nor people,
yet they too break hearts.

Richard W Halperin holds Irish-US nationality and lives in Paris. In 2024 Salmon Poetry will bring out a Selected & New Poems drawing upon his collections for Salmon and for Lapwing Publications since 2010.