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 all 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