St. John of the Cross Escapes Out a Prison Window
by Regina Walton
For Martín Espada
The professor of Spanish literature tells me
she has been to the monastery prison in Toledo,
observed the window in question
which is high up, with a steep drop down
to the top of a stone wall, then straight
into the Tajo river.
Impossible, she says, that the mystic poet-saint,
after torture by the Inquisition,
could have survived these multiple leaps of faith.
Though her description reminds me of how
in childhood, a pet hermit crab
scuttled down the stairs of our Colonial—
after dropping onto the first step,
no choice but to continue all the way down,
toward months of freedom
under the laundry room sink.
Juan de la Cruz walked home to his nuns
who secreted him to the Carmelites of Beas,
where he wrote his Canticle—
If, then, I am no longer
seen or found,
you will say that I am lost;
stricken by love,
I lost myself, and was found.
The professor thinks Teresa of Jesus
bribed the guards, instead—
but I hold with tradition’s imagination.
A priest the size of a child,
emaciated and bearing fresh marks like his Betrayed,
contemplates a scrap of moon
then makes his ascetic climb.
He pushes his scabby head
out into the broken dawn
and jumps—
and jumps again,
and lives to sing his song.
Regina Walton
Regina Walton’s first poetry collection is The Yearning Life. Her poems have appeared in EcoTheo Review, Paterson Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Poetry East, and elsewhere. She serves as poetry editor of The Anglican Theological Review, and teaches at Harvard Divinity School.