Smart Men Who Cheat Poem by gershon hepner

When women see you’re smart they think you are a cheat,
and if you try to win their trust they’ll be dismissive.
If you don’t cheat you challenge women whom they meet,
and so be made to smart when they become derisive.

The problem is that if you want to be what you
are not you suffer an internal exile, and the drama
of insignificance you suffer is a cue
for women who can penetrate your cheating armor.

Inspired by a saying of Emile Cioran (1911–95) : “It’s awful to be Romanian: you never win the trust of any women, and serious people smile at you dismissively: when they see that you are smart, they think you are a cheat.” This piece of wisdom was quoted by Costica Bradatan in his review of Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston’s “Searching for Cioran” in the TLS, October 9,2009. Cioran, Bradatan writes, “suffered the drama of insignificance, ” and all his life wanted to be “something else: Spanish, Russian, German, cannibal––anything but what I was.” His dream, says Bradatan, was “to become a stranger” so that exile became his vocation, as he pointed out in his Sylogismes de l’amertume (1952) .



10/31/09