By Michael Hartnett (1941 -1999):

I have seen him dine
in middle-class surroundings,
his manners refined,
as his family around him
talk about nothing,
one of their favorite theses.
I have seen him lying
between the street and pavement,
atoning, dying
for their sins, the fittest payment
he can make for them,
to get drunk and go to pieces.

The poem is called “The Poet as Black Sheep”. I found it via a review of the book Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers, which sounds very interesting, too.

Read the review of Sellers’ book here and more about Irish poet Hartnett here.