Wednesday 22 August 2012


You're An Idiot For Not Coming To My Home

You're an idiot for not coming to my home,
where everything is refined and clever.
Here, under the eaves hang canvases,
sketches, Mikhnov's drawings, up to the standard
of Florence or the Louvre.
In the evening Glenn Gould or Casals play Bach,
you can chance upon poetry read aloud,
Dante is popular here, but apart from him
there's poetry from the Bible, today, for instance
Khlebnikov was holding sway;
the master of the house is also a poet.
Now do you see how stupid you are, you fool.
Idiot, you don't know my wife,
but if you do know her, then you are all the more stupid,
knowing her, in not having slept with her.
Semiramis or Cleopatra alongside her are railway station
cocottes, not knowing what heaven means or sin.

- Leonid Aronzon


Picture: "Symposium" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1894).

(From left in the painting: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Oskar Merikanto, Robert Kajanus and Jean Sibelius)





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