As I came needing wonder as the new shoots need water
to the letter A that sounds its mystery in wave and in wain,
trembling I bent as if there were a weight in words
like that old man bends under his age towards Death?
but it is the sun that sounds day from the first brink,
it is the sea that in its dazzling holds my eye. How
under the low roof of desolate gray
a language not of words lies waiting!
There’s depth, weight, force, at the horizon
that levels all images.
Rabbi Aaron of Bagdad meditating upon the Word and the letters
Yod and Hé
came upon the Name of God and achieved a pure rapture
in which a creature of his ecstasy that was once dumb clay,
the Golem,
danced and sang and had being. Yes, it is true.
Reading of this devout man, I thought:
there may be such power in a certain passage of a poem
that eternal joy may leap therefrom.
But it was for a clearing of the sky,
a blue radiance, my thought cried.
Sublime Turner who dying said to Ruskin,
The Sun is God, my dear, knew
the actual language is written in rainbows.
First published in Chicago Review 13:04