Issue #1 Winter 2002
Guide Me To The River Guilt
by Lionel Abrahams
Contemporaries, compatriots,
the opened register of nightmare
lays its equal claim
to each and every one of us.
The news is: We
have sinned each other's sins.
So my personal innocence
now stinks and sticks.
What kind of rinse or wash
is there to cleanse my fibre
of the foulness it absorbed
when wrong's blood-brave contestors
bent iron banalities of law to left
and right and joined in necessary war
while I sat knowing little, unaware
of breaking wills and ways and walls
and skins and skulls?
©2000 Lionel Abrahams
Lionel Abrahams was born in 1928 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of 4 collections of verse, and his fifth, Chaos Theory of the Heart, is being readied for publication. He has also written 2 works of fiction: The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan and The White Life of Felix Greenspan. In addition, he has edited & published literary magazines & books by South African authors, and he has written many essays & articles. In 1986, Abrahams received honorary doctorates from both the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Natal.