On trying to get the 12 levels of being through Security

A man on a goat farm in Israel had told me

About a rabbi

Who knew everything

about the 12 levels of being.

I sensed they were badly needed here in London.

So when he went to the Holy land again I asked him to bring them back for me.

He was worried about getting them through security.

And indeed they spotted him with repentance in his rucksack

She was sewn deep into the lining – the tenth level of being-

But repentance had burst through, revealing

the capacity to create;

The eleventh level. 

There for all to see.

 But would they?

It was a tense moment by the conveyor belt.

And still they searched for the twelfth.

When you tried to pass through customs

They sensed you had something to declare.

Did you really think that no one would notice your lack of the customary reticence?

Did you not think that your unbounded spontaneity would act as a kind of a giveaway?

‘If he is carrying the 12th level of being we will have to be very careful.’

They were told on their security warning system

‘He is not like One of Us

He is utterly incomparable.

 He is beyond the furthest horizon of our imagining.

He is off the scale of our comprehension.

 We have merely known the shallows of the mighty deep.’

And so they searched the soles of your shoes to avert an explosion of joy

They shook out your gloves for something to grasp onto

But your intellectual depths were incapable of detection

By  the penetrating scanning  of their implacable machines.

Resolved into simplicity and sheer invisibility

You revealed only tenderness in the sublimity of your smile

They mistook your comprehension for stupidity

And foolishly

They let you through.

Sarah de Nordwall November 2010