A Letter to William Kinter of Muhlenberg
Zaddik, you showed me
the Stations of the Cross
and I saw
not what the almost abstract
tiles held—world upon world—
but at least
a shadow of what
might be seen there if mind and heart
gave themselves to meditation,
deeper
and deeper into Imagination’s
holy forest, as travelers
followed the Zohar’s dusty
shimmering roads, talking
with prophets and
hidden angels.
From the bus, Zaddik,
going home to New York,
I saw a new world
for a while—it was
the gold light on a rocky slope,
the road-constructors talking to each other,
bear-brown of winter woods, and later
lights of New Jersey factories and the vast
December moon. I saw
without words within me, saw
as if my eyes
had grown bigger and knew
how to look without
being told what it was they saw.
Zaddik - Hebrew for a righteous and saintly person by Jewish religious standards
Zohar - the chief text of the Jewish Kabbalah, presented as an allegorical or mystical interpretation of the Pentateuch