Here's what Cecilia said about her poem Carpathia: "For me, it speaks of how we move forward and backward in time, in love, into the past and the future, simultaneously, how we just keep going on, and also returning..." Carpathia Having rinsed off the soot and stink of the Polish train, having sung with the child. Having eaten and laughed and wept, had my vodka with apple juice, my bread. Having walked through the fields at dusk, and into the forest and back again-- meadows of buttercups, thistles with bristling heads, the first blue cornflowers of June. Having opened my arms to the sky falling back on itself in my dizziness. Having taken the small purple berries that dropped from the wild bush into my palm --Siberian berries, like tiny plums-- put their sweet bitter inkiness onto my tongue. Having failed and failed at love. Having gone anyway, breath after breath. Having trusted the world to be kind and stood in the doorway and listened for wolves and heard my own dead in the high grass whispering, beloved,beloved, beloved.