To rearrange the actors again and want
life to imitate art, to want my mother
to stop batting her eyelashes and lying
upon the train tracks. To want the truth
and not some family folklore, not some
mythos where, when asked if there were any
relatives left in Vienna, my mother said
none, when prodded, your grandfather got out,
Tante Didi, Wolfie, Ruth survived.
Everyone else died. There are no records
accessible from here, no letters, no marks
of faith. Only the name Furst, identified
as Jewish as soon as it slips from my lips,
only what the absence chooses to speak.