chest; Saint John of the Cross, or my son, they write in vain on the blank page. Always blank there was no writing: he then lay down upon the paper, his body taking on the proportions of a newly born child. I looked, ignoring. Nothing happened, only a wail was heard, between the table and the ceiling. Eyes closed, or open, I did not sleep; he disappeared on the page, and: where is my mother?
The rumble of the storm comes from the south of Fontiveros. It has certainly already crossed Úbeda and, before Segovia, will not find rest. We will keep each other company; I feel no pain, and John cannot be born from any part of my body; I have seen the leaves of Fontiveros in autumn, they are red or yellow and resonate through the streets when the air is charged with electricity or when he passes by with his hand writing
leaving the streets,
he found himself in the middle of the countryside.
Around one o’clock in the afternoon, the community returned and recited an antiphon; all of them, affectionately, kissed his feet and hands. It rained
when I was, by chance, sitting on the bank of the river, all I had to do was look at him for things to change by force of circumstances. In the countryside, I have to walk to be able to describe this path. I turn back to be able to begin and notice the leaves decaying from the dampness, which still hide the ground covered in herbs; to my right is a dense line of pine trees and a few buds rise up in bare shrubbery.
Those present wanted to cut a lock of his hair, a piece of his habit, and I saw there were some who bit his ulcerous leg
when the path descends, precisely at the place where the sun is reflected, my leaves are drier; the brightness is tenuous, it disappeared when I raised my eyes and the leaves resonate for having aged and shriveled; most of the trees are bare, it is a winter landscape.
What had belonged to him was distributed as relics: habit, cingulum, cilice, breviary
but the ivy remains as it was and I sit down on a stone in front of the low sun, as if it were summer
There were some who pulled the nails from his toes, there were some who wanted to cut off a finger fier I have been here for a few moments, I begin to smell the variety of plants and herbs, the vegetal species are indescribable. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for
Born without agony, John’s face was full of peace and contentment, of a particular beauty which isn’t that of a cadaver, he who had a face ;
as in dreams, he must actually be eaten
and that was how he had been born, I put my hands on my temples and, in the mirror, saw that they had whitened
I spent a restless night, waiting for the moment when I will return to this path; I could leave, but now it is night and I want to walk it precisely at the same hour.
First homily:
it is the following day, but I believe the seasons are going to change. I picked up a small branch and held it against the sun: it is speckled with frost. The sun is still high in the pine trees, it casts a cold shadow on the soil’s tangled vegetation; my feet freeze and I see the nearly dry herbs framed by a gleamless white, absent any light; it cannot be the same hour as yesterday. In the middle of the path, a woodcutter has piled up logs cut from trees; I do not know if I will continue or turn around, but I cannot stop making my way along the path I walked; now the sun hits the full height of every pine tree, from the bottom of the trunk, and there is even a place that shines, on the ground. Shrubs different from the pine trees seem covered with dry leaves that do not fall because no one touches them; a log was covered in moss where the axe’s blade passed, but I don’t want to sit down on that green bench shining with the same frost; I am about to arrive close to the sun which, at my right, illuminates all the foliage lying on the ground beneath a pine tree; in my left hand the branch is still white and dusted in rime because the cold is glacial, and they still haven’t changed. I reached the point in the path where there are more rotted leaves; then the frost reappears descending toward the village streets and I turn around with the sun rising behind me wanting to lie down here forever as you hear
Second homily:
always the same cold, delicate and intense. The outlying fields have been covered in frost: it is the early hours of the morning. At night I did not feel my usual desire to return to travel this path; but before I arrived I was filled with sadness; the frost increasingly thick and, gradually, the leaves are all white and a mineral whisper beneath my feet.
It is an illusion to believe that,
on either side of the path,
the branches were moving closer. It must be the shadow’s effect. The logs from yesterday no longer fearfully obstruct; some of them rest along the sides, beneath the branches; I sat back on my heels. Someone approached and passes by, without wondering whether I am there; the brightness continues on the ground, it is very warm and makes the vanishing frost green again and leaves the grass bare. The sun moved toward the pine trees and no longer returns to illuminate sections of the descent. A few of the shrubs’ stalks are red and they remind me of our umbilical cord: I remove a branch from the middle of the path because it moves me to sorrow
Saint John of the Cross looked at the candle as if to ask it what, next, he was going to write: the wick was not at the center of the flame and the wax, luminous at its base, reminded him of sperm deposited in his mother’s womb, his mother of the book; there were two shorter candles propped against the burning candle and the pages of the open book were connected by a furrow.
The Living Flame was not written indifferently, says the Prologue. If the words have a meaning: it exceeds all that could be conceived and splinters anything in which we would want to enclose it
He had crossed his legs beneath his habit and wrote between his eyes and his knees; Quasimodo’s Sunday Mass was being sung by the Community and fine voices followed the movement of the pencil as his teeth chewed on it. He saw his mother at the peak of ecstasy and thought, without writing it down, about a boat or a mirror at the top of a wave; the page about his eyes was in the center of the wall and was a hundred times larger than his body. Then he was scared and the pencil seemed to him to be the tip of a breast, which he brought to his mouth. Ana de Peñalosa was suspended over the page, and he on her lap. She rocked him, but the amplitude of her voice was that of a chorus and in the shadow she began to perceive the different physiognomies of the brothers who were singing you are looking for me, but I am looking for you all the more
Everything is being said and the rest of the commentary will not describe a moment in history. He hid his face in his hands, always watched by Ana de Peñalosa, and he perceived, within the closed book, the fire’s speaking color.
Since the candle had gone out, he told his mother to bring him another candle tomorrow; he plunged into the darkness of the blind, into the silence where admiration becomes lost.
Place 5 —
While he waited, John, always at the center of darkness, sat down, and had a dream that, sleeping, he traveled the three paths simultaneously: the way of the river, the way of the pine trees, and the candlelight the flame lit, he half-closed his eyes against the cloud of smoke and concentrated on listening to the river passing by: it had a feminine voice, shrouded with murmurs that could only be heard once. He made an effort to deprive himself of the pleasure and sweetness of memory but it brightened without, however, the sun emerging or the candle going out; the boat remains tied to the tree and I know it is morning by the sound of the water, by the hasty passage of the current, shadowed but without storm; but I found myself, by chance, on the bank of the river and, when the last memory
of
