Foreign

Artsybashev is a Russian.
I am an American.
Let us wonder, my townspeople,
if Artsybashev tends his own fires
as I do, gets himself cursed
for the baby’s failure to thrive,
loosens windows for the woman
who cleans his parlor⁠—
or has he neat servants
and a quiet library, an
intellectual wife perhaps and
no children⁠—an apartment
somewhere in a back street or
lives alone or with his mother
or sister⁠—

I wonder, my townspeople,
if Artsybashev looks upon
himself the more concernedly
or succeeds any better than I
in laying the world.

I wonder which is the bigger
fool in his own mind.

These are shining topics
my townspeople but⁠—
hardly of great moment.