"Late and Deep" is, very clearly, a poem that is a response to the Holocaust, or as many Jewish scholars have come to call it, Shoah, which is Hebrew for "catastrophe." It is difficult to grasp the enormity of this crime against humanity. Tens of millions of human beings died during World War II, some by disease and hunger, others by bombing, shooting, and other acts of warfare, but the Holocaust refers to the intentional, deliberate, and systematic deportation and murder of European Jews under the control of Nazi Germany and its puppet states. There are many resources for learning about the Holocaust; historical documentation is plentiful, the account of this period is presented in schools, and in some communities survivors of the Holocaust are still alive to tell their stories. In all the history of human evil, the Holocaust is different from other wicked events...