Naked,

stashed in a crib,

I penetrated the world

depraved,

a war disease,

blanketed with white masked faces

and no motherly breast to feed on

but contaminated milk in abundance.

I prospered,

I mean I grew,

like ten fingers and ten toes

as if to prove

I was normal;

Mother Victorious,

a marketplace for

rubber gloves and

rubber nipples.

Ten years I grew,

and ten years more

to witness the trail of father and mother,

to witness the trial of German and Jew,

ten years without fatherly hand,

ten years without motherly breast,

and then,

like a robed cocoon,

she entered my sleepless room

for next to me a foreign baby cried,

and at ten

I was appointed

judge of the world

as she bent with rubber gloves

and turned the baby over

only to return to a bed

of linen flesh and woolen hair.

Ten years,

and ten years more

to bang my head against

a hereditary disease,

while a thousand, white-

robed doctors salivated.