KONSTANTIN FISCHER, HANIA, CRETE

BEARING A NAME

He was never

as good a swimmer,

as good a climber,

as good a student,

as good at anything

as his older brother –

or as his brother would have been,

had he not been killed at the age of three

killed during a German raid of their father's village,

killed along with his mother – his father's first wife – and half her family.

And he often wondered

why, years after the war,

years after his father remarried,

why they had considered him worthy, him among all the others,

worthy of bearing his older brother's name

Michail, mi cha-el – who is like God?

                                                                                                                                        Konstantin Fischer, 2017