Even Now

For the Poet Antonin Artaud

Among us, the strays, the strangers,

the ones who never landed, the deranged,

a pale captain has died.

I see the arteries in his temples

no longer throbbing.

His face, a carved paving stone,

has finally stopped moving.

That we are scarred for life

is clear to them, the balanced souls,

the undisturbed characters,

in all their level hours.

They broke his fragile back.

They locked him up with a chair and bread and straw.

They called him mad and sick.

They pitied him.

I will meet him still

under bridges, in the empty train station.

He will put his arm around my shoulder.

Towards morning he starts drilling,

shaking my fibres,

until I scream, Artaud, Artaud.

I see the arteries in his temples

no longer throbbing.

Break the belt of impotence.

Crack the shell of infertility.

My dead greyhound, my ravaged tower,

my bleeding, stillborn,

burnt-out man, Antonin Artaud.