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
