The Spear of Longinus - a Poem by Oswald LeWinter
The Spear of Longinus
By Oswald LeWinter
Time slips its leash and moves
into the garbage dump of memory
to hunt discoveries buried deep
under the detritus of a life hardly spent
in chewing each event to yield its marrow.
There lie the tattered shirts of feeling,
soiled from bloody spots of marriages
unmassaged by remorse at being cast away.
There the children’s bears, stuffing
beaten out the day I left and never came again.
Cries may be insubstantial but dried tears
glisten like specks of crystal here
and there, assuming the disguise of silver
light that points the indefatigable glance
toward some obscure and necessary treasure.
I know the gilded spear is hidden there
that pierced a martyr’s liver once, a wound
no healing ever sealed. I know from legends
how mystically, the organ’s blood congealed,
This spear cures festering guilt by penitence.
But like the Roman, chained by duty to an act
that changed his life, beset by wakefulness
so I might watch the night crawl through
the hours like a crippled thief who can’t escape
his crime, I never understood my life.
I tried the spear! Uncovered each antinomy,
risked a near century of poems. Stripped suet
from my metaphors like a chef, preparing steak
for gourmet tongues. Nothing became clear.
The meat hid in a sauce too turbid for the spear.
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Oswald LeWinter is a 72-year-old American poet living in Lisbon. In 1963 he published Shakespeare in Europe while teaching at Columbia University. He has also taught at the U. of Essen and at Wuerzburg, Chulalongkorn U. in Thailand, Jagiellonska U. of Cracow, Carabobo U. in Venezuela, and published in Shenandoah, Sewanee, Contact, the noble savage, Epoch, Hudson, Paris Review, Chelsea, the Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Beloit, Botteghe Oscure, Kuerbiskern (Germany), and elsewhere. His poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Swedish and he has been anthologized in several countries--such as Best Poems of 1962 in the U.S.A and Best German Poems. Mr. LeWinter has been awarded a number of prizes, including the International Rilke Prize for poems in German and English.
Mississippi Review, June 3, 2003.
The Spear of Longinus
By Oswald LeWinter
Time slips its leash and moves
into the garbage dump of memory
to hunt discoveries buried deep
under the detritus of a life hardly spent
in chewing each event to yield its marrow.
There lie the tattered shirts of feeling,
soiled from bloody spots of marriages
unmassaged by remorse at being cast away.
There the children’s bears, stuffing
beaten out the day I left and never came again.
Cries may be insubstantial but dried tears
glisten like specks of crystal here
and there, assuming the disguise of silver
light that points the indefatigable glance
toward some obscure and necessary treasure.
I know the gilded spear is hidden there
that pierced a martyr’s liver once, a wound
no healing ever sealed. I know from legends
how mystically, the organ’s blood congealed,
This spear cures festering guilt by penitence.
But like the Roman, chained by duty to an act
that changed his life, beset by wakefulness
so I might watch the night crawl through
the hours like a crippled thief who can’t escape
his crime, I never understood my life.
I tried the spear! Uncovered each antinomy,
risked a near century of poems. Stripped suet
from my metaphors like a chef, preparing steak
for gourmet tongues. Nothing became clear.
The meat hid in a sauce too turbid for the spear.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oswald LeWinter is a 72-year-old American poet living in Lisbon. In 1963 he published Shakespeare in Europe while teaching at Columbia University. He has also taught at the U. of Essen and at Wuerzburg, Chulalongkorn U. in Thailand, Jagiellonska U. of Cracow, Carabobo U. in Venezuela, and published in Shenandoah, Sewanee, Contact, the noble savage, Epoch, Hudson, Paris Review, Chelsea, the Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Beloit, Botteghe Oscure, Kuerbiskern (Germany), and elsewhere. His poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian and Swedish and he has been anthologized in several countries--such as Best Poems of 1962 in the U.S.A and Best German Poems. Mr. LeWinter has been awarded a number of prizes, including the International Rilke Prize for poems in German and English.
Mississippi Review, June 3, 2003.
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