Dark Thoughts

I'm almost like that dark hallway
with a few framed photos
and lamps on the walls.
So many visitors
have walked through me,
dark and light,
depending on the illumination.


Copyright Regina Derieva. Translation copyright 2007 by Valzhyna Mort. All rights reserved.


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Poetry From the August 2007 issue: Dreams of Our Russian Summer

Regina DerievaRegina Derieva

Regina Derieva has published twenty books of poetry, essays, and prose. Her most recent book of poems in English translation is Alien Matter: New and Selected Poems. Derieva's poetry has appeared in Poetry, Salt, Poetry East, Quadrant, MPT, and the Notre Dame Review, as well as in many Russian and Swedish magazines. She has translated poetry by Thomas Merton and contemporary American, Australian, Polish, and Swedish poets. Regina Derieva lives in Sweden. Her website is www.derieva.com

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Translated from RussianRussian by Valzhyna MortValzhyna Mort

Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus, and moved to the United States in 2006. She is the author of Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) and Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press 2012). Mort has received the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and the Bess Hokin Prize, among others. Currently she is a visiting writer at Cornell University.

Photo by Nikolai Lesnikov

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