Oh, who can heal me?
Why can’t I have you altogether?
Don’t send another messenger who will not tell me what I want to hear.
All who come refer to a thousand things about you I’m remembering and distress me but what slays me is a don’t-know-what that they keep stammering.
How can I go on living a life which is not where I live and dying from the piercing of my imaginations of my love?
Why, when you wounded my heart, didn’t you heal it then?
Why did you take it, then leave it and didn’t want to keep what you had taken?
Be my troubles’ end, since you alone and no one else will do.
Let my eyes look at you who are their light.
I only want them so I can see you.
Give me your presence and let me die of seeing you and your grace.
My love is an agony which will not go away unless it has your presence and your face.
O Silver fountain, won’t you on your surfaces of crystal show me the reflection of the eyes for which I long that are printed on the bottom of my soul?
Take them away my love, I’m flying to you… My beloved is the mountains, the solitary forests in the valleys, the strange islands, sounding rivers and the whisper of the loving breezes.
The peaceful night and also the rising of the morning, music gone quiet, solitude resonant, the supper which refreshes, stirs our loving.
Chase off the little foxes, because our vine has now begun to blossom.
Let us knit a tight rose-knot and let no one disturb us on our mountain.
From the Canticle by John of the Cross (1542–1591), written largely in prison in Toledo. Translation by the Editor, revision of a translation first published by Katabasis in 1968.