When you knew that I was leaving
You bought me a pair of red shoes;
I left them in Florence with the memory of your hands.
You were unsure when you said 'So you'll dance and forget'...

from 'I drink with you'

Crossing the Carpathians is a collection of poems about exile, family, and the survival of love. Carmen Bugan was born in Romania, and her book has its origins in her experiences during the 1980s, as a child of political dissidents and as an exile from her country. Written in America, Ireland, and England, her poems are about crossing countries and languages, recording loss and celebration, reconciling memories with dreams.

Table of Contents

On the side of forgetting

In the silent country

Portrait of a family

The demonstration

Fertile ground

The first visit

The divorce

Exorcism

Stories for the night

Confession to my son

Taking leave

The train station at the border

Grand Rapids, Michigan

In exile

Home

For Sorin

Ann Arbor

For you

Return to sound

Sitting with a hurricane lamp in America

At her funeral

Doorways

Leac na cumhaidg

I drink with you

Emilia

Walking by the Atlantic at low tide

Crossing the Carpathians with you

Sleeping apple

The day we decided we would lie

By the lamp, burning

Cursing the tongue

Lullaby

Memories

In the middle of eternity

This spring

For my father

Flight dream

Handfast Point

Black Head Ledges

The second spring

Windspit

Moorings

Poem without a name

At the window

Past solitude

Lyme Regis

Abbotsbury

A house of stone

Blindness, beside another war

Under Magdalen Tower, with you

The space into

After seven years, for the unearthing of your body

Evening

January, Holywell Cemetery

Oh, yes

For my mother and sister