Yevtushenko, On A Rainy Day

All is quiet where I sit
and listen to rain trickling
through a hole in the waterspout
outside my bedroom window.
I seize the moment
to be alone with my Yevtushenko.
He is saying between quotation marks
that look like droplets of rain
suspended near the edge
of my windowpane,
he is saying,
“And I run like mad
Never catching up with myself.”

How I wish he would run right
into my room so he could see
my pen struggling across this piece
of white paper, writing as though
on soggy stationery
or on shreds of sandpaper.
What would he say
if he could see me thus?
Would he recite,
“I walk across life
Shirt collar open” or,
“I am cruel to the petals”?
Or would he simply
lead me out of this room
to the rain-soaked grass
in my garden
where, in a quiet corner,
under an awning,
my soft-spoken washerwoman,
tall and gentle as Yevtushenko,
is noiselessly erasing with a bar of soap
a darkish stain on my skirt?
Or would he whisper
with outstretched arms,
“Come, let us kiss…”?

But the rain has stopped.
Yevtushenko has to go
back to the second-to-the-last-shelf nook,
next to my husband’s copy of
The Stock Market Handbook.