WEBVTT

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Here's a translation
of a very recent poem

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by the young Russian poet--

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I don't know, maybe he's
middle-aged by now--

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Andrei Voznesensky.

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This is called "Phone Booth."

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And it's a light poem, which
gets serious as it goes along.

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"Someone is loose in Moscow who
won't stop ringing my phone.

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Whoever it is listens
then hangs up.

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Dial tone.

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What do you want?

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A bushel of rhymes or
so, an autograph, a bone?

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Hello?

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Dial tone.

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Someone's lucky
number, for all I know,

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is the same worse
luck as my own.

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Hello?

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Dial tone.

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Or perhaps it's an
angel calling collect

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to invite me to God's throne.

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Damn, I've been disconnected.

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Dial tone.

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Or is it my old conscience,
my power of choice,

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to which I've grown
a stranger, and which

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no longer knows my voice.

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Dial tone.

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Are you standing there
in some subway station,

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stiff and hapless in the
cold, with your fingers

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stuck in the dial, as
if in a ring of gold?

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And is there outside the
booth, a desperate throng,

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tapping its coins on the
glass, chafing its hands

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like a line of people who
have been waiting long to be

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measured for wedding bands?

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I hear you breathe and blow
into some remote mouthpiece.

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And as you exhale, the
lapels of my coat flutter

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like pennants in a gale, thrown
together, together with you,

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with you unknown.

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Hello?

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Hello?

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Hello there?

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Dial tone.

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Dial tone.

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Dial tone."

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