Sometimes I ache to detonate,
to scream.
To scream across this whole wide cosmos
that no one is well:
not the newborn,
not the old man, already half a corpse.
No one is well.
I long to climb some mountain peak,
on silent feet, like a solitary traveller,
and tear the four directions open with a scream,
screaming
that no human belongs to another.
I long, like the madman at the crossroads,
to beat my chest, again and again,
and cry:
every human being on this earth
is a bastard.
I can’t.
I cannot scream.
From every side
they seize me by the throat,
these brokers of belonging.
From the whore in another quarter
to the bride at home,
to the gentleman of the house,
every one of them
has me by the throat.
They say,
“Shut it, you son of a bitch.”
And I shut up.
Like a stray dog
asleep on the pavement,
I doze,
muttering to myself:
no one is well,
no one belongs to anyone,
every human being
is a bastard through and through,
and I—
I am a living, breathing
son of a bitch.