Here's a translation of a very recent poem
by the young Russian poet--
I don't know, maybe he's middle-aged by now--
Andrei Voznesensky.
This is called "Phone Booth."
And it's a light poem, which gets serious as it goes along.
"Someone is loose in Moscow who won't stop ringing my phone.
Whoever it is listens then hangs up.
Dial tone.
What do you want?
A bushel of rhymes or so, an autograph, a bone?
Hello?
Dial tone.
Someone's lucky number, for all I know,
is the same worse luck as my own.
Hello?
Dial tone.
Or perhaps it's an angel calling collect
to invite me to God's throne.
Damn, I've been disconnected.
Dial tone.
Or is it my old conscience, my power of choice,
to which I've grown a stranger, and which
no longer knows my voice.
Dial tone.
Are you standing there in some subway station,
stiff and hapless in the cold, with your fingers
stuck in the dial, as if in a ring of gold?
And is there outside the booth, a desperate throng,
tapping its coins on the glass, chafing its hands
like a line of people who have been waiting long to be
measured for wedding bands?
I hear you breathe and blow into some remote mouthpiece.
And as you exhale, the lapels of my coat flutter
like pennants in a gale, thrown together, together with you,
with you unknown.
Hello?
Hello there?
Dial tone.
Dial tone."