Calling All Cosmonauts

Yuri is calling, shouting perhaps,

into the ether, into the void

at the bottom of a bottle

once full of potato vodka.

Staryj, Staryj Knight

mumbling cross-language puns

over the cheese-board

at the embassy party.

The Tadjiki resident's wife

hasn't spoken a word since the blini.

Artyom is falling, failing perhaps,

out of contention, out of context

in an outpost or a dead end

for spies of uncertain favour.

Starry, starry-eyed,

reading true Pravda tales

under the moonlight

in the apartment's privy.

The muscovite commissar's son

isn't dreaming of wealth or the Party.

Staryj = ста́рый : old in Russian.