Budapest Winter, 1944

"In Budapest your great
uncle Max, my
father's brother who very
successfully built
a business selling printing
machines, an amateur
opera singer
with a lovely tenor voice

arrested in his business place,
and with hundreds
of others lined up at the banks
of the Danube. Groups
were driven toward trains waiting
to deport them East,
Treblinka some, but mainly
Auschwitz
and the death center
at Birkenau,
others gunned down where
they stood.

Max, then in his sixties
or early seventies
hurled himself down rocky banks
through roots
and brush, a thin, old Jew
bleeding in torn
overcoat, rolled into the icy
river rather
than embrace bullets and bodies,
hid under an ice
float, given up as dead"

mother witnessing old
thick-veined
hands flutter, circle
and punctuate
how her uncle floated
frostbite waters,
swam dragging soggy clothing,
climbed out
frozen, unforgotten
and alive.