Withdrawal Poem by gershon hepner

Withdrawal



Withdrawn from grandeur and aggrandizement,
God initiated the tsimtsum
that kabbalists describe with puzzlement
but rarely causes poets to be dumb,
because it’s tsimtsum that allows them to
explain their emptiness, reflecting that
which God created so that all can view
His universe as neither round nor flat,
but infinite, like Him, without the lim-
itations that its fullness might expose.
By emptying ourselves we echo Him,
and from this emptiness all grandeur grows.

Tsimtsum is a concept developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (the Ari Haqadosh) in the 16th century. It denotes the contraction of God that facilitated the creation of the universe which, before this contract, was filled with his infinity, denoted by the term Ein Sof. Kay Ryan has written about this concept, unwittingly perhaps, in her poem “Blandeur”:

‘If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.’

11/9/08

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success