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 is seated, reflected in the mirror and the silk of the dress she removed;
on her naked lap,
the head of the day
which is unimaginable
radiates,
without annulling
the terrible voices
and descriptions
of the nocturnal
itinerary:
I spent the afternoon and early hours of the evening wanting,
still on that day
and before
it became morning,
to open the window over the river with the impression that I had slept in the river
and had just arrived there:
there was a brightness so intense that none could bear it, unless it were veiled; the bridge would come from above, overlying the sun. The birds flew within the water (to the depths), the boat sailed seemingly empty, although hands grasped the oars, which did not move; an even more intense light accompanied the boat, like a fountain born in the middle of the water; and, at times, words and phrases were inscribed in the birth of that light, which tumbled down to the place where Thomas Müntzer was going, his ears and his mouth.
From the banks, the crowd continued to loose expletives; but the Living Flame, falling flame after flame, covered the body: the ululating voices lowered their tone, only the green of the meadows where there were many white and yellow flowers followed the boat
it stopped in front of the window where Saint John of the Cross wrote; Thomas Müntzer raised his chest dewed with water; the shouting became singular, irresistibly drawing the current; a bird, emerging from the river’s depths, landed on his chest; the boat continued to glide alone, but traversed by flames:
Saint John of the Cross looked at the spiderwebs which, on the ceiling, edged the pale blue of the cornice and, at that moment, in the boat that was always descending the river (although always in the same place), Thomas Müntzer noticed that a horse swam nearby and that the crowd, reflected in its lustrous neck, had become a peaceful mirror.
Saint John of the Cross, turning to lower his eyes toward the page, as he had seen and not seen the ululating crowd, picked up Ana de Peñalosa’s hand, which she had abandoned on the table, put the pen between her fingers (although I ignore where you are) and wrote:
“among all three there were three people and one beloved being.”
He hid himself to write; but, first, he began by reading the book that held his infinite happiness
he remained at the beginning, but it had no beginning; it was its own beginning and, accordingly, there was no beginning; one in the other was like the beloved in their friend; and this love uniting them has the same value in them both, the same equality
as he was reading, he realized that he read standing, in front of his bookshelf
the art of fasting
distracted,
he looked at his ring finger on which Thomas Müntzer, while he had been headless on the boat, had placed a ring whose stone was his head to how could he hide himself to write
we will let him write, said the horse. We, John of the Cross and I, left for the river and the forest, on a morning of clouded sun; the horse wanted to go with us and we climbed up on its back; John of the Cross had several hands, the reins, and his hand on the horse’s neck. It whinnied a few times: we put a garland of flowers on its head. We immediately saw Thomas Müntzer lying in the boat, his severed head appeared in front of us,
the darkness hung
we moved toward the atrium of the house where we could only arrive at night, after many hours of river and forest and always on the back of the horse that, trotting, whinnied words
we, felt the heat of its blood under our legs, and the wide house was already nearing
on the first night, we would camp in front of it without going in, awaiting the boat in which Thomas Müntzer’s body traveled
we would find the summer house uninhabited, the lights on in Ana de Peñalosa’s room
on the other side of the bank would be the desert, the river, and the forest.