Stanza 9
—
ESPOSA:
¿Por qué, pues has llagado
aqueste corazón, no le sanaste?
Y, pues me le has robado,
¿por qué así le dejaste,
y no tomas el robo que robaste?
—
BRIDE:
Why, after wounding
This heart, have You not healed it?
And why, after stealing it,
Have You thus abandoned it,
And not carried away the stolen prey?
Excerpt of Saint John +’s teaching on stanza 9:
A stag wounded by a poison arrow neither rests nor remains calm, but searches everywhere for remedies, plunging now into these waters, now into those, and the effect of the poison arrow ever increases in all circumstances and will all remedies taken until finally it seizes upon the heart and the stag dies. Similarly, the soul touched by the poison arrow of love, as is this soul we are discussing, never stops seeking remedies for her sorrow. Yet she not only fails to find them, but everything she thinks, says, and does brings her greater sorrow. Conscious of this, and knowing she has no other remedy than to put herself in the hands of the one who wounded her, so that in relieving her he may slay her now entirely with the force of love, she turns to her Beloved, the cause of all this, and speaks to him in the following stanza:
Why, since you wounded
this heart, don’t you heal it?
And why, since you stole it from me,
do you leave it so,
and fail to carry off what you have stolen?
Personal reflection on stanza 9:
I find bittersweet comfort in this stanza. On the one hand, the ineffable love of the Beloved has ruptured and recurringly, if only periodically, continues to rupture my mundane life and being. This ineffable love of the Beloved illuminates within my spirit a sense for the order and completion that my soul and life could attain through grace.
And yet by illuminating and awakening in my spirit a sense for the order and completion my soul could attain through grace, my Beloved intensifies my writhing: my life and being now endure a conscious experience of psychical scoliosis in the which I effectually wither, at least in part, and suffer the anxiety of eternal disparity since I am aware of being disfigured and malformed relative to the perfected likeness of himself which his eyes can perceive in me through the charity of his generous gaze.
Why, since you wounded this heart, don’t you heal it?
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