Intergalactic Poet

My lips are motionless
by the last telephone booth
on earth
before the space station
takes up my imagination.

I have stored boxes
of books and plants
here at the bus stop
along the Arbat.

My friends are exiled
or gone to war
like my Western comrades
even in the new century,
for we Earthlings
are moving runaways
like extraterrestrials
waiting for a space station
to beam us up
and float upstream.

Ivan, a part-time actor
in summer stock
is ready to blast off.
Sergei, the scientist,
is planning for Mars.
Igor, champion chess player
with a peace sign
in his lapel
slips onto his space shuttle
for the stratosphere.

And an intergalactic poet
awaits his turn.