I should have stayed in utero, put off 
			the voyage down my mother's birth canal 
			and used the time to figure out a rationale

			for landing in this place, a planet 
			out of work, a world bedeviled by 
			the usual homo sapiens angst-the need 

			to pigeonhole the creatures, cull elect 
			from non-elect, which those days meant 
			the paradigm was Nazis at the helm, 

			but Jews and Gypsies, Blacks and Browns 
			and all us other Untermenschen 
			portioned out as soap or ashes. 

			In Bedford County, too, we were berserk 
			that year, insane enough to keep up with 
			the Fuehrer's jackboot folk. We burned 

			the court-house in our rage to lynch 
			a black man. Later, in my teens, I found 
			a snap-shot Mom had hidden from me--
			flames that shouted from exploding windows, 
			raping winter's helpless night--
			as if to hide that photo could save me

			from the human stain, as if the raging fire 
			that gulped the midnight air could drown 
			the world around, but leave me safely on the ark.

				--- Julian Crowell
				My thanks to Blue Collar Review for publishing 
				"Bedford County, Tennessee, 1934" in their
				Winter 2006-2007 issue.