In the back seat of a Moscow cab,
the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko recited,
Monologue of the Beatniks
to what he thought was an audience of three,
as they rushed through Kruschev’s drab city.
Our century has often told us lies
imposing them on us like tolls and taxes.
Our ideas spread, as fast as dandelions,
blowing in the wind of our realities.
A hint of reckless hope stalled in sad traffic.
The cab swerved, bumped the curb, stopped,
and the cabby said through tears: “. . . so I
may fully taste the beauty of art, without
endangering your lives.”*
Yevtushenko smiled,
cleared his throat, began where he had ended:
it seems to us that our present
is nothing but our past life in disguise.
After a pause the cabby spoke into the second silence,
“You tell the truth, comrade poet, this life is nothing new,
I am just an urbanized uprooted peasant.”
And then the cab sped off.
This incident is reported in the Paris Review,
interview with Yevtushenko by Olga Carlisle,
Spring, 1962. [*actual quote from cabby]