* * *

Antonin Artaud

I lack the voice to sing your praise, great brother.

If I bent over your body the light would scatter

Your laughter would thrust me back.

The spirit between us, during what we improperly call

A fine outburst,

Plunges about several times,

Kills, digs, and burns

Then is reborn later in mushroom softness.

You don’t need a wall of words to exalt your truth,

Nor a conch-shell to anoint your profundity,

Nor that feverish hand your wrist flails round you

And leads you lightly on to fell a forest

With our entrails as the axe.

Enough. Re-enter the volcano.

And us,

Let us weep, let us assume your exaltation or demand:

‘Who is Artaud?’ of this stick of dynamite

From which not a sliver has been lost,

For us, nothing has changed,

Nothing, except this chimera wholly hellishly alive

That takes leave of our anguish.