of you blurred, I noticed the day and the greenery which, from the earth, penetrated the water; the blue boat oscillated toward the tree it had been tied to, and also oscillated toward the mouth of the river, and I then began to accumulate memories of the future in a great meditation
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 (“I do not know how many days I will stay here because they threaten me, from Baeza, that it won’t be very long. I am well, without knowing anything, and the desert life is admirable”). 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 shouldn’t 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
The lit wick, as I watched over it, filled the candle with wax. A dog, or another animal, came over to me and left its skin on the ground. I looked at its bare body and, with my hand, caressed my mother. The parted skin and body brought me joy and sorrow and the animal, which could have also been a wolf or a bear, began to emit a melodious and powerful voice. I lay down on the skin and the fur, soft and manifold,
turned me into morning. He went over to the brazier and the heat of the flame beat at his chest. Hanging above the flame was the portrait of Ana de Peñalosa
(even though I would be happier here, I will leave when you ask me to) to which he then saw was Ana de Peñalosa herself; he wanted to enter the portrait and the fire. He pushed his mother’s knees apart; the early morning seemed to him to be the silk fabric of her dress and the lips that had torn the silk savored, singing, the marvelous food that would guide him on his journey. He picked up the book but, when he went to cross through the opening, he realized they both could not pass; so he left it on the table, open to the place where, for the last time, he had slept. The homily resonated in his ears from the entrance, the shadows of the trees cast on the walls reminded him of the fear of becoming lost. He then raised his hand like a torch and ordered, turning around: to follow me.
The scent of the herbs that were meant to carpet the opening spread through the air; rosemary and mint burned on the ground and, among them all, the feminine voice of the homily stretched out.
ANA DE JESUS
(in her room she opened the window and, to keep from falling asleep, welcomed the cold, particularly on her chin and her hand; she was bending over the paper, which she had divided into three columns; the smell of the food, rising from the kitchens, made the air delicious and bearable.
A bit of snow
but I do not close the window so it can be near, without the glass; in the meadow at the center of the cloister there is also a bird that runs and stops (disappears). The air is clean and the brightness begins to hit the furniture in the room, inviting us for a portrait.
I now watch the path advancing toward the main road, between two ruts: it is a path of grass; all is meadow.
It troubles me that I must abandon this place. — What will I do, really, away from here,
where night and day are so important? — They speak, expressing themselves through delicate changes in light. — I’m going to close the window because my throat’s already hurting: a response to the cold. The weather has changed so many times and I haven’t been interested in anything else )
SHE HAD COME TO VISIT HIM. With her, she had brought her dog. She asked him about the book, where he was in the text: John of the Cross told her that he was going to die to be able to describe the moment of death; but, rather than looking at her, he looked at the dog, its eyes prominent and closed.
Ana de Jesus’s voice had picked up speed. He did not understand why she spoke to him; he saw many trees and horses pass through the dog’s eyes, a few of the horses stopped close to the trees and shook their manes, nostrils smoking. Dark birds flying low, and even imitating terrestrial animals, crossed the meadow, surprised. And, as the movement brought him a turmoil of ideas, among which that of death had taken form, he lay down on the pallet and communicated to Ana de Jesus that he was going to arrive.
The dog went over and stood beside him, stretched out over the stone; Ana de Jesus found that she was talking to herself or, then, to Ana de Peñalosa who, in the meantime, had come and sat down in front of the text.
— What is he writing? — asked Ana de Jesus
— He is writing me — replied Ana de Peñalosa, and
she entered the maternal bed hearing the canticles, unable to fix her feet to the ground. Walking amidst quicksand, the introduction to those new surroundings did not end; she responded to all the doubts briefly because she had little time (she could not delay any longer). But the book had become precious, she had used it so many times that it was now impossible to close it completely. It lay on the work table with small gaps between the pages, its front and back covers turned inside out; her desire to sleep was constant, although she could not give into it because she had to keep watch over the canticles with open eyes and on feet that, enormous from writing, hesitated; she heard, as she reflected, a loud whisper, “greater than language can express and feeling imagine”; Ana de Peñalosa and Ana de Jesus took him by the hand, clasped their fifteen fingers and three palms tightly; as the crowd advanced to surround someone, who fled; their hands undulated over the sheet and the bed and Ana de Jesus said, secretly, to Ana de Peñalosa — ...it must be experienced.
Next to the body of the dog lying on the ground appeared the body of the one they pursued; the room’s walls receded within a dense fog:
I am not born, but
the book lay on the work table; raindrops came in through the window and spread across the words he had written for the Prologue of the Living Flame
O most noble and pious Lady,
it was difficult
to do as you asked:
no one can speak
of the depths of the spirit,
unless they have a spirit
of fathomless depths. In the meadow at the center of the cloister there is a bird and a dog and, between them, I worked the miracle of hiding the body of the one they pursued:
(Ana de Peñalosa said, “he entered into ecstasy”)
I, Thomas Müntzer, reduced to a child’s body, whose size does not exceed that of my severed head after the battle of Frankenhausen;
I, Thomas Müntzer of Stolberg,
making the air’s clear trumpets resound with a new canticle, attest that, above all my contemporaries, I have consecrated myself, with ardent zeal, to become worthy of acquiring a most rare and perfect science.
The men who had held power until now converse coldly
between the pages appeared the manuscript of a text that Saint John
of the Cross had neither written, nor ever seen
it was only a voice in which a voice was imagined
before nightfall, covered in a cursive handwriting, illuminated by the red lamp that Teresa de Ávila hung from her throat
she
