There is a right answer in the same sense in which 2+2=4 is right.
But last time I tried it with college math majors, we had all kinds of hypothetical answers (all wrong: infinity, 3, 4, 11(?), ...), and then we took a vote (for, "that's how all scientific truth are decided," said I, hinting specifically at the global warming problem).

You are right, other iPhones are reflections, but how many of them are there? (OK, when you give me your answer, I'll take the burden of adding the iPhone itself on myself.)

Sarah-Jane,

Of course, I didn't mean any tricky interpretation of the question. If you wish, I can be more accurate and ask: what's the maximal number of images of an object (including the object itself) which one can see in a room whose 2 adjacent perpendicular (and straight) walls and the floor are made of mirrors?
And I understand that you like such puzzles for their own sake, but I can assure you that I wouldn't post this into a poetry forum if the situation was not perfectly illustrated by these poems.

Why then you don't object the phrase written on the right mirror of every car: "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear"?

So, if the images were parallel then there would be infinite images, but they aren't, so there isn't.

Without getting out the aluminium foil (I'm tempted), I'm guessing there might be two clear reflections in each 'side' and a ghost image in the middle where the mirrors meet - this is perhaps the 'guiding thread' pulling the four reflections together in the poem.

But then that doesn't account for the floor. That won't reflect the person
maybe but will account for another two reflections from each side panel taking it to eight.

But will it be nine with a further 'ghost' image bringing it together, or even ten if there are two ghost images where the floor panels meet the side panels.

The poem seems to imply just one 'thread', so I'm going to go for two images in each side panel, four at the bottom and one 'ghost image' where they all meet, making it an unlikey-to-be-correct nine!

Sarah-Jane
(thank you - I am enjoying this very much - also, I love 'window-pane lorgnettes' in the poem)

If you are going to tell us a poem with the line "represented in their author's phrasing" is a hint, then you can't dismiss my answer, which follows the train of thought you laid down the tracks for. The iPhone is represented twice in your word-problem. If you don't want it turned into a word problem, don't tell us a poem about linguistic reference is a clue–or better yet, acknowledge that the poem opens up the possibility for other answers. (I suspect you do not also give the poem to your math students).

Orwn, in another reply I mentioned an article of Gasparov about this poem, where he praises it for the coherence between form and content. So, the hint is not in some subtle connotations hidden in the poem but in the very essence of it: the quatrain being mock-translated in it is about a mirror reflection of the Moon, which serves at the same time as a metaphor for the very act of translating.

Sarah-Jane,
Congratulations (almost) -- you've figured out the correct answer, but then you confused yourself. To "unconfuse" you:

What was the reason you said first that if the mirrors were parallel, the number of images would be infinite? Because, I guess, you realize that images reflected in one mirror can, together with that mirror, be reflected in the other mirror, and so on. And this happens even though the mirrors themselves don't meet at all - they are parallel. If so, what makes you think that there is some kind of "ghost image" where two perpendicular mirrors meet?

Back to the poem, I guess you are treating two translations as two perpendicular mirrors (as they are!) and find there 4 versions of the same
"original" stanza: the original, its mock-translation from Russian into Russian, then its translation in English, and then the mock-translation of that English translation into English (or, maybe, it is the English translation of the Russian mock-translation). But why do you treat the last version as merely a "ghost image"? (Is our translation that bad :-?) I think there are 4 more-or-less equivalent versions of the stanza there, and the last one is not hiding in any line between mirrors, but a legitimate reflection of a reflection.

Thus, you are right that by bringing in the 3rd mirror, you'll find one more reflection of each of the four images, so totally eight (imagine a translation of the whole Russian-English thing to Esperanto). But they have nothing to do with the lines where the mirrors meet.

So, here is the next challenge for you: find the third mirror in the poem and figure out what should you count there to get the answer 8.

P.S. The "lorgnettes": in the Russian the image is different - there the full Moon is looking at herself in all windows (but shines at the author from a mirror).

This. Look at the first picture.

It is an unfortunate viewing angle: move the camera, and you'll see that the middle image is not at the intersection line at all.

I feel like that third-grader. You ask her how many flowers the girl sees. The third-grader answers, “One” (as some of us did), and you say, “No, eight!”