All People Are Pregnant
All people are pregnant, said Diotima,
their bodies are pregnant, their souls are pregnant,
oh how they want to give birth with all their might.
Beauty is childbirth. Birth is beautiful.
So Diotima said to Socrates. Socrates said
the same thing at Agathon’s party, and it was heard
by young Aristodemus, and he passed it on
to Apollodorus, who told his own friends.
Little Plato was playing with beetles in the garden.
Where did all these beetles come from, he wondered,
did they emerge suddenly from an immense, flawless beetle
in the sky? That we are unable to see?
At night, his mommy carried him inside and put him to sleep.
At Agathon’s place a party of pederasts began,
and because no one could stand to drink any more they began to argue:
let us talk of love. Let us talk of beauty.
by Hasso Krull
from Neli korda neli
Publisher: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, Tallinn, 2009
© Translation: 2010, Brandon Lussier
Publisher: PIW, 2010