— The woman lowered her eyes. According to the mirage, the horse was submerged in the water interrogating his hooves and, when he lifted his white muzzle, He remembered a text written on a yellowed paper according to the mirage. The woman understood that she could see the horse’s thoughts, other thoughts, and she lowered her eyes until they closed:
supper
is the end
of the day’s
work
and the beginning
of the night’s
rest.
Houseless,
Saint John of the Cross
and Thomas Müntzer
ate
in the middle of the desert.
They knew
there was going to be
a battle.
The horse
had already reached
their side.
Full of life, he ran around them. Always surrounding them, he placed his hooves firmly on the ground, lifted up into the air. Thus flying, Pegasus slept, his horse’s eyes closed.
Saint John of the Cross,
eating what Ana de Jesus had prepared,
looked at his dream in the nearby oasis,
the place of the book. He had nothing to write with, the words moved in front of his hand (they did not pass to the paper). He made an impatient movement on the sand, closed his fist. The shadow lowered over Thomas Müntzer’s body
the sleeping horse had become completely immobile in the air. John wrote upon the sand, kneeling, his body facing forward, four hooves and his hand writing
That night,
as was its habit,
the nearest oasis
slowly cooled off; the fire of the book hovered over sand’s surface, the hooves of battle horses, brothers to Pegasus, could be heard, if anyone wanted to apply an ear. Pegasus was still sleeping in the dream although he was actually keeping watch over John and Thomas Müntzer and that very secret.
But John of the Cross wrote without hands, without a pen, and without a book, his severed finger touching every flame; the trotting of the horses interrupted Thomas Müntzer’s dinner
the shadow of his head meditated
(in the place where she had prepared the food, the woman’s face was full of tears; she had seen Pegasus wake up and, suspended at the point where he had risen up to guard the writing of memory; he ate time, finished the dinner Thomas Müntzer had interrupted).
Ana de Jesus had opened her eyes in astonishment.
Pegasus, the horse, buried himself in the sand, waiting for someone who knew how to write to come and watch over him. While he had been suspended and moved through the air he had felt a blow on his neck, on his right side, beneath his mane; he certainly wasn’t going to die but he sensed that immobility, contact with the sand, and the book’s living flame could, before the following morning, cure him.
The writing
was the voices
in chorus
of thirty thousand peasants
who after abolishing the judges
made their way toward the massacre of Frankenhausen
and whose footprints were lost in the desert
A polar cold had invaded the battlefield; the peasants advanced slowly, their hands frozen on the tools they usually used to work the earth. A rider suddenly appeared among them, announced the defeat and the massacre telling them that, with such cold weather, those sitting in the middle of the horses’ blood would win
the text immersed in the horses’ blood tells of the adventure in the desert and how it liberated the mind from all spiritual imperfections and all earthly desires. It entered into that inner darkness where sensitive and invisible things can be penetrated through the snow, supported only by the ascent and ascending.
That is why I call it a stairway and secret because its steps and articles are secret, hidden to all sensitivity and understanding. That is why he says he went in disguise the bear was born from the snow, from a drop of blood that fell from the neck of Pegasus the horse. In the white and blue reflection he walked fearfully, but with apparent calm; it is a voice, nothing more than a voice, but he heard Müntzer preach; he wanted to look for the writing to know exactly what was in his preaching. He ended up writing on the page of the manuscript, the bear attentive and sitting at his side. Saint John of the Cross’s heart transcended the text, was buried in the fur of the bear
who said
this is the month I most love; it is the last month of the year. I wanted to write the Rules
there are four yellowed pages
at my side
on a tiny branch
the paper was lying on Saint John of the Cross’s open book
the Living Flame and I read, in the middle of the page, that union is predicated on likeness
those who resemble one another come together
like is known by like.
I continue,
looking around
what I just read
and the moment arrives when I say
the fecundity of the gift is the gift’s only retribution
it seems to me, before anything else, that the rules should rest on their own
that is
that is
that they should be able to remain sleeping,
and be taken as a dream. Watched by Saint John of the Cross, Heart of the Bear sat down on the ice. He was only a drop of blood from Pegasus the horse and he became larger than him, heavier. He was and was not related to him, he who haunted the polar and desert regions; all the animals stopped walking, a great silence spread out through the cold areas and invaded their ears. (The battle came, was coming.) He ended up choosing the ice, leaving through the sand to call Pegasus. He hoped to be able to cross the river that had also frozen. But the crowd of indistinct forms assembled in front of him did not move. Much time passed and they were still in the same place; fascinated by the ground that had opened up cracks from which murmurs emerged. He then made a detour and
